The latest episode of Health Points (Series 3 Episode 12) delivers inspiration and practical insights to elevate your health gamification projects, featuring the remarkable journey of Joke Veltman. Joke is a professional pianist, PhD candidate, and creator of the Melody Game for cochlear implant users.
A Story of Resilience and Innovation
Joke’s story is both moving and motivating. After losing her hearing due to a genetic condition, Joke faced the daunting reality of living without music. A core part of her identity. Despite being told by medical professionals that music would be impossible with a cochlear implant, Joke refused to accept this limitation. Instead, she embarked on a journey of self-training, experimentation, and ultimately, innovation.
Key Takeaways for Health and Gamification Professionals
- The Importance of Perception Over Recognition
- Joke’s approach to music rehabilitation focuses on perception—what users actually hear and experience—rather than simply recognizing correct answers. This shift fosters engagement, motivation, and self-efficacy, especially for users who may feel discouraged by “right or wrong” feedback.
- For designers, this is a powerful reminder: gamified health tools should celebrate individual progress and perception, not just accuracy.
- Co-Creation and Iterative Design
- The Melody Game was developed through close collaboration with cochlear implant users, therapists, and programmers. Joke describes an iterative process of prototyping, feedback, and adaptation. Balancing scientific rigor with the lived experiences of users.
- This episode is packed with practical advice on involving end-users in the design process, ensuring your solutions are both effective and empathetic.
- Gamification as Empowerment
- By framing auditory training as a game rather than an exercise or test, Joke lowered barriers to participation and made the process more inviting. The Melody Game’s playful structure, unlocking instruments, progressing through levels, and visual feedback, transforms what could be a daunting rehabilitation task into an engaging journey.
- The lesson? Gamification isn’t just about points and badges; it’s about creating environments where users feel safe to explore, fail, and grow.
- Designing for Diversity and Accessibility
- Joke emphasizes that cochlear implant users are as diverse as any group, with varying backgrounds, goals, and abilities. The Melody Game accommodates this by allowing users to progress at their own pace and focus on personal enjoyment, not just performance.
- Scientific Foundations and Real-World Impact
- The episode delves into the neuroscience of auditory training, the challenges of translating musical complexity into accessible exercises, and the importance of data-driven iteration. With over 150 users already benefiting from the Melody Game, the impact is tangible and growing.
What You’ll Learn by Listening
- How to turn personal adversity into a catalyst for innovation.
- The value of focusing on user perception and enjoyment in health gamification.
- Practical strategies for co-creation, playtesting, and iterative development.
- Insights into the unique challenges of designing for sensory rehabilitation.
- Inspiration to push the boundaries of what’s possible in health and wellness through playful, user-centered design.
Final Thoughts
Whether you’re a health professional, a gamification designer, or simply passionate about making a difference, this episode is a masterclass in empathy-driven innovation. Joke’s journey reminds us that the best solutions often come from those who live the challenges—and that with creativity, collaboration, and a playful spirit, we can help more people rediscover joy and confidence in their health journeys.
You can listen to this episode below:
Episode Transcript:
Ben
Hey everyone, and welcome to another episode of Health Points, where we talk about anything and everything gamification health. I'm Ben, and here with me is my co-host, Pete.
Pete
Hi everyone.
Ben
And today we have with us Joke Veltman. PhD candidate at IQ Health Academic Centre and creator of the Melody Game for music training for cochlear implant users. A professional pianist by background, due to a genetic defect, Jorke gradually lost her hearing and eventually needed a cochlear implant herself. Jorke, it's great to have you on the show today.
Joke
Hello, everybody. Thank you for the invitation.
Ben
So it'd be great to start to know about your background in music and your experience with losing your hearing.
Joke
Yeah, when I was young I had really very good hearing and I enjoyed it a lot. I studied the Conservatory of Amsterdam and what I learned there that is relative hearing is very trainable so that you hear, you just have a tone you start with and you can relate all the other tones as melody, as harmonies. From that one tone, you do not need to know the name of the tone, that is with absolute hearing. And so that trainable of that relative hearing, that was the thing that I took with me when I slowly lost my hearing. The DFNA21 is a genetic defect in my mother's family. And it starts around your 30s and you think, what's wrong with my hearing? What do I need to do? It started to be a little bit gray, a little bit dull. And very slowly I lost all the high tones, but it took me about 25 years. And then I find myself with so few hearing that the doctor no longer could help me with hearing aids and he started talking about a cochlear implant. But his message was no music with cochlear implant. It's not possible. Nobody does. You can't. Do something else. Sell your grand piano and learn something else.
Pete
Oh, that's harsh, isn't it? Sell the grand piano. So over that experience of losing your hearing, did you find it was making it harder to play professionally?
Joke
Yeah, but you lose details. So I changed my career from being an accompanist of soloists and choirs to conducting choirs, to lecturing about music, and the red line is teaching. So I didn't, after some period and deterioration of the hearing, I didn't feel so comfortable at the podium anymore, at the stage. So at that moment, I decided no longer be trying to be a concert pianist and do some other things. I've been writing for the paper about music and at the moment I thought my hearing is too bad. I don't want to express my ideas about other people's music anymore. No, I stopped it and I did other things. So I always tried to go with the flow, what was still possible, until I find myself in the need of having a cochlear implant without music.
Pete
That must have been pretty shocking to hear.
Joke
Yeah.
Pete
You can have this, you can have some hearing. I mean, I'm interested in how much hearing does it give you? Like what are the benefits of a cochlear implant if you... can't play music anymore.
Joke
Yeah, it is hard to say a percentage of how much you hear, if it is 5 or 10 or not, yeah. But there was few. I went to Nepal to walk for six weeks in the mountains, just had nothing to do with music and just have time to think about, to experience the silence, to come to and, yeah, a decision about what I was going to do. But the idea of trainability was still with me. And the doctor was not so optimist about my possibilities, but I thought it could be possible to retrain the competency of discrimination between pitches, between timbres. But my first experiences with SCI were really, yeah, awkward. When people ask me how did the CI sound, I normally say very green because I just cannot express. It sounds so strange. I say it sounds like a cactus and you need to embrace that cactus. But that is some work. Walking in Nepal learned me that you get food you don't like in the beginning. It's so sharp. But you get used to it. And after four weeks of walking and climbing, I appreciated that sharp fluid. And that is what I wanted to come to with the sound of the CI as well. And you have habituation by exposure. So I started to play the piano again, just to explore my possibilities, what the sound a little bit, what's difficult. And in a healthy hearing, every ear has about 20,000 hair cells in the inner ear. And they try to restore hearing with 12 to 22 electrodes. It's a little bit brand dependent. Yeah, you understand? It's not the same. But still, it is very good because we sit here and we understand. We have communication and music is more difficult because the sound is so complex. There's a lot of information in music. You have the beats, the rhythm, you have pitches making melodies and harmonies, you have timbre of instruments, and very often also song text. So it is complicated and speech is more, yeah, you can not say simple, but it's not that built up of a lot of layers. And it is about understanding the message. And the tone is not so important for that message. So that's the difference between music and speech. But that makes also that music is very good brain training. And yeah, that's where I started with.
Pete
That's good. So it sounds to me like you had the hint that you might be able to get some music back through the cochlear implant and that maybe there was a way to overcome that challenge and hear more and you started by playing the piano again. What else did you do to overcome this musical challenge?
Joke
Yeah, in the beginning I thought when I had my C chord and I thought, what is this for kind of a sound that I put my two arms on the keys and sounds the same. Then that moment I thought, or I'm too early, or the doctor is right, I don't know yet. But living without music, yeah, I couldn't. And music is everywhere. How to avoid music? I don't like the television so much, but see a film without music, go to a restaurant, to the shops, go everywhere. There's music, and I have a lot of music inside. I'm sorry, my brain is all the time beep, beep, beep. I want to, yeah, I wanted to be busy with it and trying it. I teach all my life, so I thought I'd teach myself. I had a good colleague helping me with this, and I started singing, playing the piano, listening A lot. I played the viola as well, but I had a few times, so the viola was a little bit, as we call it in Holland, in dust. And I thought, when I need training, I could try to do something with Avila. That was hard. But we tried to have more things you can feel also, and not only here. Now, there were a lot of things, and I had the feeling of making progress and feeling more comfortable. Yeah, that's what happened.
Pete
Okay. And So you taught yourself and it sounds like you came up with like a training program for yourself. Is that how the musical listening training program for cochlear implant users you've been working on came about? Can you tell us a bit more about that?
Joke
Yeah, and at the moment I thought, hey, I retrained my possibilities, I feel more comfortable with this. I thought, then I can do it with other people as well. And in Utrecht, where I had the implantation of the CI, they asked me, How do you do it? You play again, you enjoy it. They had a symposium and asked me to do something with music. So I said, okay, talking about music is only half. Let's play a bit also. So the audiologist played his violin and we played the Beethoven sonata part of it. And that sounds good because he plays the violin and I play the piano. And the piano is more easy than the violin. They wanted to do a musical listening training, but they didn't know they did not know how, and they had some attempts that didn't be so successful. In that time, I got also in contact in Nijmegen at the academic hospital that is connected with IQ Health, and they had the same problems. They did some workshop, and the problem is also when you think from a healthy hearing brain and your healthy hearing normal use, you think this is a song and what is the song? It's well known, tell me the name. The CI is not that good to let me know the name of the song. So when you have to focus on recognition, there are a lot of mistakes. But what does recognition you tell about enjoyment? It's not, recognition is not about enjoyment. It is about right or wrong. So my focus went on perception. And when I work with other CI users, but also with well-hearing friends or colleagues, you can say, what do you hear? And I say, I hear ringing church bells. And they can say, no, it's accordion. OK, show me. Oh, this is the sound. OK. and the bass and the high tones and the timbre, okay, it's like this. So perception, everybody has one. You can discuss it, you can share it, and it can change by habituation, and it can change by training and support. Now, that's my vision about a musical listening training program. Give people options to work with. You cannot know how far you come. And what I want from music is near professional. And other peoples can be really more content with just having fun or more enjoyment, having the sound of the television again, going to a party, not being afraid of music anymore, until that they really enjoy going to concerts. But that is very personal and it's not important. You can do your own thing, walk your own path. And the focus is on perception.
Pete
I think that's really interesting because I think that applies not just across music, but anything creative. If you concentrate on the learning through perception of art, creativity, then people will improve, but also they'll be much more motivated. to stay engaged because they're not being told they're wrong.
Joke
Sure.
Pete
I think this is an approach that works.
Joke
You feel aversion for music. It's like a wall. So all music you meet is like a wall. And you think this wall is just sounding so terrible. I want to go to get out of it. But when you start learning how to feel the beat, the beats like the heartbeat, It is not knowing one, two, three, four. As A conductor, I know how it works, but you don't need to know things. You feel it. And when you feel it, it's okay. And you're feeling in Dutch, it is wareneming, that is true. Yeah, it is perception, but there is a part of true in the Dutch word. And you should learn to be confident with that. It's what you hear. That's always right. And somebody else can hear something else. It's okay. And you can discuss it and maybe it's the one who keeps saying, sounds good like violence and the other ones could say, no, it's a voice. No, okay, best. And with that part you can train. You can give people more confidence, more self-confidence, more self-efficacy. And that is really interesting and it is for me, really inspiring to see people flourish and feel more comfortable with music and be more, part of life. And then you have pitch. Pitch is really difficult for the CI. It's out of tune. The inner ear is made so beautifully on the topic with that 20,000 or more hair cells. It's called normal hearing. I don't like that. It is healthy hearing. When you are lucky, you have healthy hearing. My hearing is lost. It's not even unhealthy. It's just disappeared. And now I have those 12 electrodes and they bring in some pitches, but the electrodes are not fitted right to the tonotopic system of the cochlea. So when I play a C on my keyboard, on the piano, it is not sure that the electrode that is coding for that C is at the C place in the cochlea. So that makes it a little bit out of tune. And the sound is very often, the sound itself is not straight. It's a little bit, and yeah, how to exercise with that. Now, I've been reading scientific articles about how the brain works with music, how the brain works with language, how many training hours you need to get new neurological paths in the brain. Yeah, how to do that? You cannot put people to the piano they won't have. So you need something like a melody game. And that was the start of my... Then we had Corona. So that was in the... I started in 2019. And in my second period of training groups, 2020, I had some telephone from Utrecht. Forget about it. Everything is closed. Everybody has to stay at home. No music listening trainings anymore. Write an e-mail to the institution that is offending you. So the program is lost.
Pete
Yeah, I came across your work at Games for Health Europe back at the end of March. And the bit I heard about that fascinated me and wanted us to interview you is the melody game, which is obviously part of your musical listening training program process. So can you tell us a bit more about what the game is, how it works, how it plays?
Joke
Yeah. So I wanted people to retrain their discrimination capacities. between 2 tones entails short melodies of nine tones. Two tones are more hard than melodies of five tones going in the same direction because you have only ping ping and you should discriminate. Are they the same? Is the second higher or lower? And then you so gradually I go from 2 tones until those nine tones. training people's auditory memory, auditory attention, and that discrimination, yeah, possibilities and power. It is not really a game. It's more a web app, but it looks like a game. So the first version was Sai, the dull teachery. So the piano teacher had been thinking about, you have to do things like this. But people did it and they made progress. So we were talking and thinking about a second version and we had a working group with CI users, four and two CI therapists and our programmer. And we were thinking about a narrative that should make more playful and You could also have some graphics, some colors. So we have a stage and there is Cini and she is the conductor. But her band is silent. So it's dark, the lights are off, you hardly see. And the first level has a drum section. And when you did enough exercises and you collect points, you can have that drum player alive, and then you can hear, yeah, not so interesting already. You exercise this.
Pete
So you're getting a visual drum and the soundtrack starts playing and you're, yeah, okay.
Joke
And you can stop it and put it on just what you like. The second level has a piano. So when you have enough points for the second level, you have the piano. The third level is a double bars. So that is not really interesting, and it's just what I wanted, that people go on, because the 4th level is the guitar, and then you still have only the bass section of the band. And then the 5th is the saxophone, the 6th is the traversal flute, and the 7th is the singer. But we have not so much money. So she sings only dub, dub, dub, dub. It's not super interesting. But the text is for nobody a problem because there is no text. And people can experience how many instruments they can listen together, what they can discriminate. And it is a little bit fun. And in those levels-- so you start with two tones. Are they the same, different? And They have four tone steps, so increasing difficulty from big steps to very small steps. And then the second level is, the step higher or lower? And here we see many CI users change the direction of the step. We don't understand. So you can control the CI if everything is right or the electrodes do right and the audiologist can look with a client or patient, the CI is control, it's okay. He hears pum pum, he sees the CI do pum pum, and the CI user chooses pum pum. Hey. And that makes a lot of a difference when you hear in a song half the tones right direction, half the tones not in right direction. I understand why I recognize so badly. So that's interesting, but we don't understand yet. So that is one of the things of the next step of melody game. Our data output, we have a data output and how to analyze that and how to put it in SPSS where you can do statistics with it. So this is really interesting.
Pete
So 2 questions spring to mind immediately. First of all, it sounds like you started making that in COVID in 2020. So by now, how many people have been playing and what sort of feedback, what sort of impact has been happening? Because I imagine it's really powerful because these are all people who've been told you're not going to be able to listen to music.
Joke
Yeah, we have now, the melody game is not free to get in because we have our research with it. So about 150 people have been working with it. And with the newest version that is about, I think, about 60 people, maybe 70. And the melody game test with the first two levels we did with... around 50 people. But the test was, the first version of the test was not right because we had a lot of discussion about randomization. So the randomization was not okay. But not that this fixed. But you have a lot of things to talk about, to think about. And we also had people come into the melody game and we say, okay, you try level 3 is how to have levels of difficulty. So you can start with listening and that is just getting acknowledged to what you hear. So you can just push and it will repeat itself. You make a bit higher, make a bit lower, and you all the time you can... And you can try, it goes down, goes up. Okay, I think I understand what I'm going to hear. When you have a lot of experience, you do all the three and you think, oh yeah, of course there's this. And then you go playing. Playing is exercising. But we better call it playing than exercise. And you see the visuals. So the visuals for that third level, five lines equal. Five lines going up, five lines going down. And a small ball is going over the lines, all the three pictures, but you only hear one. So you have to discriminate what one you hear. So my grandchildren are around 10 years and they really like the game. They're really good at it because they have healthy hearing. And they understand intuitively how it works. You see it and you hear tong, tong, tong, tong, tong. But when you have difficulties, you don't hear. And when you hear steps going up and down wrong, You think, Yeah, I see, but I hear, yeah, that picture is not in. So, what do I hear? And you can repeat all your mistakes and all the answers. And the third play modus is challenge. That is test, but test is not a nice name. So, you have listening, playing, challenge, and the challenge is 20, that is 20 exercises just going on. You cannot repeat. You can just click. You see right and wrong, but you can just click. And after 20, it says so much percentage, good answers. And you can see, am I better than yesterday or is this a bad day? And I thought I got it and now I have a lot of mistakes. So that is how it works.
Pete
Wow. Okay. Do you know what? I think, basically, we've gone into more detail than we normally get to on this podcast about how the game works. I've got a real insight into it. But what I'm intrigued by is what is your approach to designing it and play testing it when you can't necessarily hear mistakes and your audience is coming from literally not being able to hear? Wow.
Joke
I am an amateur. So I don't know anything about how to program such things. So we started, the programmer lives not so far from my home. So in the evening I go on my bike and we sit at his desk and we discuss and we design on paper and we try to sing and play. So you can easily discuss and then He's got Martin. Martin and I decide this is our proposal. Then I go to the working group with the CI users and therapists. And the therapist, no, not this way. No, we need our patients want more. Okay, And that is the co-creation process. And I am more at the side of the developer because we are together, the team. And when he says, no, I cannot make this, or it makes unstable, or it's more difficult. No. And then I tried to discuss that with the co-creation group. And we had discussions about the narrative, about the three modi of listening, playing, and challenge, about the levels, how to do it, what is too difficult, what is good enough for people with difficulties, what is good enough for people that are learning more fast. Now, in that way we discussed and then Martin programs and I get a look at his desk and I think, I mean more of this or maybe. And so it grows.
Pete
Yeah, it sounds like quite an iterative process with good co-creation. I think that probably comes from your teaching background as well.
Joke
Yeah, I think so. And in the second version process, we were more talking about requirements and all the requirements had to be okay before programming. That's more abstract. And then we had also a scientific group from the IQ Health Nijmegen about the test, about the statistics that they have other perspectives. And they are not so well known with CI users. So they can say, a test of half an hour is no problem. And I say, a test of half an hour is dying. People cannot do it. is too much. And we don't test discrimination power, we test fatigue, we test boringness, and yeah, things like that. So that's a different view on what is possible for people. But it's also very interesting.
Pete
So how many, are you playing basically Is it a game you keep coming back to and playing again and again and getting a bit further, but starting from the start each time? Or does it save where you're up to?
Joke
What I'm, you mean what I'm going to do in the future?
Pete
I know, I mean like for the players. Do they do they sit down and play for 10 minutes every day?
Joke
Yeah, we could. I could even show it to you on the screen, but I don't know if it works like that here. But we could have an appointment in Teams and we could play it together. The only thing is Teams will not have you hear the sound of it. But I can give you a password as well and put it off about a week later or something. And for well-hearing people, it is not difficult. But for people with CI, it can be be stranging. You think, Hey, I see... and I... how could it be? I hear... but it doesn't sound so well. And when the steps are very small, it's hard to discriminate if there are five the same, if there are five small steps. And then your auditory memory should be able to behold the first tone to compare that to the fifth one. And Yeah, that is the training also. You need a lot of auditory attention. Well, I am the lucky one. I did my training many times, so I'm very good at it. And I'm A trained musician. So I have a brain that is prepared for a lot of tone discrimination. But many people have really problems in how to do this. They never, sometimes people say, I never listen. I hear music and then, but you make me listen. You ask, what do you hear? What is that high sound for you? Oh, what is that high sound for me? I don't know. No. Say something. Does it sound nice? Does it sound sharp? Is it singing or is it a violin or is it blowing some woodwind instrument? What do you hear? Being curious. And I've more been out of it, and I want them to come into. And the melody game is helpful for that.
Pete
Yeah, you've hinted there at the sort of feedback you're starting to get about people being pushed out of their comfort zone, shall we say, with music. But after 150 people have been playing and going through the music training program, what feedback and impact have you had?
Joke
Yeah. It is really very diverse. So the CI user group is as diverse as human beings are. And they come from never. Yeah, when you are bad hearing from young, that's different. But sometimes people had very bad hearing. I got a gray hearing. There's not much high tones, not much tone quality. Then they have the CI. When they get used to it, they have a lot of wind. So they feel more, what's this? What's this? But sometimes they think, I thought it was true what I've been hearing. And now, yeah, this CI sound, is that untrue? No, that's also not true. Because this artificial hearing and this electrical hearing, you cannot say how it sounds because you never hear it before. It is in your head. So I have also my possibility, my differences with difficulties with discrimination and my husband saying, Oh, this piece you have been playing very often. No, sorry. I don't play so many notes. Yeah, then and then. And then this in the car and then we come home and I sit and I wait and I think it's no Mozart, no Haydn, no Chopin, must be Beethoven. I think early Beethoven, maybe a long piece, okay. And then they say what it is, a passionate sonata, of course. I don't recognize my own pieces. That is stupid. When I was good hearing, I've been knowing about the page. But yeah, okay, it's like that. And to appreciate it, I don't need to know the page. But I would like to be able to recognize more. Yeah, okay. I think that is hard with the CI.
Pete
That's interesting. So you're like, I'm getting a hint that like you want to make it more difficult, not so much more difficult, but broader, more training in the game. So what are the next steps? What are you doing with the melody game?
Joke
Yeah, we are thinking about making it possible to have more different instrument sounds in the training part. just to have the exercises not only in piano sound, but maybe in violin sound, of cello sound, of sung sound. But finding enough funding is really a big problem. I also should like to have a better test. The test is now too long, and I should like to have the test part so closed that I can people let into the test. And then when they finish the test, they can use their password to come into the melody game. Because I saw when I give people their password, so I make an appointment for an online meeting to do the test, and I send the password 5 minutes before the meeting starts, and then the person doesn't show up in my meeting. And then after one hour, he says, oh, sorry, I forgot about the time. Haha. No, they exercise an hour because they just want to be so good as possible. And I want a test, the test before training as bad as possible, to see more improvement. But it is so hard for people to do something they are afraid of, they are sure they can't. But many times they have rather good outcomes about that sometimes people have about 50% good answers. That is not so good because you can also just click without listening and then you will have about 50% good answers as well. That is in English, I don't know.
Pete
That's fine. So This is, I mean, it's been absolutely fascinating. What I'd like to know also is like, well, two things. One, is there any, from your experience of designing and working with this game for health, have you got any tips or advice for anyone else who's designing a game for a different health or injury from this game design process?
Joke
I would like to make a rhythm game as well, or an instrument game. It's not only a quiz, but more a game. I think the first thing is take time to think about what you want to have. So what is the end of the product? What do you see in your future? What's the step on the horizon? With the melody game, my intention was to have a training tool that people could do at home in their own time. And that was challenging enough. to help them invest time. And so you should think about the end and then look where you are to start. Have a good team, have a lot of discussions. That requirements, that was my mistake that I was not so, yeah, I didn't have so much view on it. that I was all the time thinking about how to describe those requirements, because in programming it is only yes or no. And in my musical experience...
Pete
It's more of an art.
Joke
It is more flexible. Programming is not flexible. And that was important for me to learn. And my partner in crime, so Martin, was a very good job, a very nice man, and we had a lot of good discussions. But It took me time to learn programming is only yes or no. It's one or zero. It is not that flexibility that you have in music.
Pete
Yeah, and I don't think I actually asked, what inspired you to make it a game as opposed to just a learning program.
Joke
Yeah, the first name was Melody Game Train, a melody train game, but very many people understood that as a train, so a locomotive and a train, and not a training program. So it was a melody train game. And I wanted it to have it more challenging and a more inviting name than a melody train web app or something like that. So it is called melody game. But I think in It is not really a game, Mar. For me, it's no problem because I am not so experienced in playing games. And a lot of my participants do not play internet games or Nintendo games and things like that. So they don't know.
Pete
Oh, I see. So it's engaging and they don't necessarily know it's a game. They're just taking part, they're playing, and that's great.
Joke
I think it works better when you say You play with it, then you say you have to train with it or you have to exercise with it. Many people don't like so much exercising. So the homework they got is called at homework because they don't like to be pushed. And no, yeah, this melody game, you can just look for your own way how to work with it.
Pete
That's fantastic. Is there anything you wish I'd asked you that I haven't actually asked about? Anything games and health, your melody game, whatever.
Joke
Yeah. I would hope there come more games for discrimination of what you hear. It should be nice to have some idea for a game about discrimination of voices. Is it a man's voice, a woman's voice, a children's voice? Or you'll be in a cafe and I'm the waiter and I'm going to a table and I have to ask what people want to drink and I have to understand right. And then I understand the cola and I don't know what, and the beer. So I virtually, I bring the cola and the wrong things. That should be interesting also to have such games. I think they are really interesting to exercise with discrimination. And I think discrimination you can make more sharp by having nice games to work with.
Pete
I agree. In fact, after we finish recording, I'm going to send you a link to one of our previous episodes where we interviewed Amanda Philpott from Ear Gym, which is an app which helps you to discriminate from sounds, particularly in cafes and noisy environments.
Joke
Nice.
Pete
Okay. So yeah, it's a growing area, just even within this part of health. But great.
Joke
I think so. I think so. And I think there are many possibilities to develop such games and that they are very healthy, maybe also for people with healthy hearing as well.
Pete
Fantastic. What a great way to wrap up. There's fun games out there. It's been great hearing from you, Joke, about your journey. Sad, but then turning it not only into solving it for yourself, but for over 150 other people and obviously many more to come and bringing the joy of music back to them and adding it to some. They never had it. What a fantastic episode. Thank you so much, Joke.
Joke
Interesting. Interesting. Thank you for the invitation.