Nia Bowers
Pictured Above: Seniors playing MindLink at Atria Golden Creek in Irvine, California.
For Erika Chen, connection has always felt fragile across generations. Growing up, she often noticed how easily conversations between her and her grandparents stalled due to their dementia. What began as a quiet personal observation has since grown into an ambitious social-innovation project: a dementia-friendly board game designed to help families, caregivers, and seniors reconnect in meaningful ways.
Now 17, Erika is preparing to take that idea into its next phase. What began as a concept has already begun finding its way into real-world spaces, offering early signs that her approach may be working.
“I didn’t just want to make something entertaining,” Erika explains. “I wanted to create something that actually helps people talk to each other again.”
From Observation to Action
The idea began to take a concrete shape as Erika volunteered at a senior home, where she worked closely with elderly residents, including those living with dementia. There, her own personal observations with her grandparents were confirmed as she observed how quickly conversations could dissolve into confusion or silence, leaving both seniors and younger visitors unsure how to engage.
She noticed that many activities available to residents were either overstimulating or overly simplistic, offering little space for genuine interaction. That gap stayed with her.
“Dementia doesn’t mean people stop feeling,” she says. “They still want connection. They just need a different way to get there.”
Rather than treating the experience as a one-off volunteer commitment, Erika began asking how design could help bridge that divide. The result was a board game concept built around clarity, repetition, and emotional comfort, elements she identified as crucial during her firsthand interactions with seniors.
Pictured Above: Erika Chen with her game, MindLink.
Designing With Purpose
Turning that idea into a tangible product proved far more complex than Erika initially expected. She worked through multiple iterations of the game’s mechanics, visuals, and structure, aiming to make it accessible to players with cognitive impairment while still engaging younger participants.
She sought guidance from mentors as she continued to refine her understanding of dementia-friendly design. Throughout the process, she returned repeatedly to the senior home, using those experiences as a reality check for her assumptions.
“I had to rethink what ‘fun’ even means in this context,” she reflects. “It’s not about winning. It’s about comfort, familiarity, and shared moments.”
Those ideas have since moved beyond theory. As of now, MindLink has been played in eight senior homes across six different cities, as well as at MIT’s AgeLab. Erika has personally led in-person gameplay sessions with over 120 seniors, with the game reaching more than 630 individuals in total.
Learning to Lead
The project also marked a personal turning point for Erika. Early on, she struggled with advocating for her idea, especially when it meant asking for resources or feedback.
“I was pretty introverted at first,” she admits. “Talking about a completely new idea and asking people to take it seriously was intimidating.”
As the project progressed, however, that hesitation gave way to confidence. The more she refined her vision, the more clearly she could explain it to others. What once felt like a personal experiment began to feel like a responsibility.
“I realized that if I didn’t speak up for this project, no one else would,” she says.
That shift, from a quiet observer to a self-assured advocate, mirrors the evolution of the project itself. Both grew through experience and continued reflection rather than sudden breakthroughs.
Testing, Scaling, and Funding
While MindLink has already seen early adoption in community settings, Erika is now focused on refining it further. Through structured testing across different environments, she wants to better understand how the game performs. Based on those insights, she expects to make targeted improvements before moving toward larger-scale production.
To support that transition, she is currently raising funds to cover publishing, manufacturing, and distribution costs. She has currently raised over $3,000, which has already gone toward producing additional copies and expanding access within local communities.
In parallel, Erika is expanding the game’s reach across California, with it already being played at SASCC in Saratoga. Erika hopes to expand her partnerships to bring the game to a wider audience, including more organizations and institutions aligned with elder care and family wellness.
“I want this to be sustainable,” she explains. “If it’s going to make an impact, it has to actually reach people.”
Beyond the Game
For Erika, the board game is not an endpoint but a starting point. She envisions it as part of a broader effort to reframe how society approaches aging, memory loss, and intergenerational relationships.
Her long-term goals include expanding the project into programs that encourage structured interaction between seniors and youth, as well as supporting dementia-related causes through fundraising and advocacy.
That vision is already beginning to take shape beyond local communities. Erika recently spoke about her journey building MindLinkat the 2026 Learning Planet Festival, in front of a global audience of more than 815 people, sharing both the inspiration behind the project and its potential for global impact. Her game was also selected as 1% of all entries in the Blue Ocean Competition, earning it a spot in the Top 250 innovations for 2026.
Looking ahead, she plans to deepen that reach through hands-on work. This summer, she will intern with a nonprofit organization that supports intergenerational programming across more than 45 senior homes in California and Oregon, collectively serving over 6,000 seniors. In this role, she will contribute to program planning and outreach, and introduce MindLink to new communities to expand its presence across the organization’s network. While this remains a future aspiration, it reflects the scale of impact she ultimately hopes to achieve.
A Personal Beginning, A Collective Future
What sets Erika’s project apart is not just its originality, but its origin. It did not emerge from a pitch competition or a classroom assignment, but from sustained human interaction and quiet observation.
“This started because I saw something that felt wrong,” she says. “And I wanted to try to fix it.”
As MindLink continues to evolve, through testing, partnerships, and wider distribution, its success will likely be measured not only in scale but in moments of connection: shared recognition, comfort, and understanding across generations.
For Erika, those moments are the point.
“I want people to sit down together,” she says simply. “And feel like they understand each other again.”