Background
Echo's Awakening is a game for therapists and gamers
The current state of video game therapy has focused primarily on non-therapy based video games to facilitate conversation during counseling. What existing products/services fail to address is seamless integration of therapy and a digital video game into one experience. Our product will address this gap by gamifying counseling tools to teach and display an array of coping mechanisms.
Persona Hypothesis
Our two main users: Therapists and Casual Players
We created persona hypothesis to get an idea of what our assumptions are about our potential user base. Both of their needs vary. Therapists would use it as a counseling tool where as a Casual Player may use it for entertainment and pick up coping skills along the way. Both need constant progression throughout the game and save points to control their journey.
Therapists
- Needs research-accurate content and to vet methods/techniques used. They would use the game for extensive, long-term counseling.
- They need the game to feel personable and allow opportunities to build rapport/converse in a safe space.
- They need a "Clients's Pass" to allow patients to play the game with them
Casual Players
- May care less about story mode and value quickly jumping into levels.
- They need quick access to minigames/puzzles outside of story mode so they can revisit levels.
- They would be more of a short-term user, since their game play would be infrequent/sporadic bursts as opposed to timed sessions.
Competitive audit
We wanted to bring a different therapeutic experience
A group of therapy adjacent games and therapy apps were examined to gain insight on the pros and cons of our competitors. I did heavy research on different therapeutic strategies including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and more importantly, the short and long term effects of stress and how certain therapeutic techniques can handle it. I primarily looked at the Calm app because many people use it for stress relief.
Interviews and affinity mapping
Looking at the experience of gamers and therapists
I conducted user interviews with my team to gain an understanding about the attitudes of our potential audience. We interviewed five people. Two of them were therapist with an extensive background in psychology and a specialization in play therapy. The other three candidates were gamers who liked to play casually.
We asked some questions like:
- How do you de-stress after a long day? What relieves your anxiety?
- What factors influence your choice of games? (genre, graphics, storyline, multiplayer, etc.)
- What do you wish our game could do for you/your clients? What do you hope our game will achieve? How could our game achieve that?
What we gathered
Our qualitative data was split between the preferences of gamers and the preferences of therapists. We created two lists of what each group tended to agree on. These findings are different from our persona hypothesis because we are using data from the five interviews to inform our observations. These gatherings will then be carried onto the personas.
Therapists
- Would like the therapeutic elements to be a bit more clear and provide opportunity for real-life application of techniques
- Values less stressful and more accessible gaming for clients
- Values and uses coping skills in both their daily and work life
- Doesn’t feel too strongly about collectibles in-game
Casual Players
- Values allegorical messages as opposed to in-your-face techniques that feel too much like conventional therapy
- Finds entertainment value in a purposeful challenge
- Has some experience with coping skills but doesn’t have extensive knowledge or practice with it
- Likes to find all collectibles to have a sense of success in the game
Personas: End Goals, Life Goals, and Experience Goals
Persona 1
Meet Clementine Martini, Audiobook Narrator and Writer
Bio
End Goals
- Pick up coping mechanisms while being entertained
- Explore and immersed in a calming world
- Have constant progression in the game
Experience Goal
Clementine wants a sense of achievement by overcoming the challenges of the game and gain control of the stress in their life.
Life Goal
Clementine wants to be someone who can translate therapeutic coping skills from a digital world to real life scenarios.
Persona 2
Meet Joanne Michaels, Play Therapist
.png)
Bio
End Goals
- Play with patients to observe and teach coping techniques
- Have the game feel personable and allow building rapport
- Have constant progression in the game.
Experience Goal
Get sense of accomplishment for both themselves and the client
Life Goal
Joanne wants to be someone who uses more effective therapy tools to help their clients and become a better therapist.
User requirements
Creating persona expectations
I came up with a number of requirements needed for our game in order to fulfill the expectations of our personas. If these requirements are fulfilled via our game, our project is more likely to be successful.
Data Requirements
Data requirements involve areas that deal with data and how our application may need to have certain data in order to preform optimally.
- Expects that the play time and save slots are kept when coming back to the game
- Expects to have visual confirmation of saving data
Functional Requirements
Functional requirements are all of the other tasks and actions our personas need, these are not data related and cover areas like visual appeal and how the application works in general.
- Expects to have visual representations of the items they have collected
- Expects to see tips for real world application of therapeutic techniques taught in game
- Requires that coping skills and other researched content are accurate and well studied
Frameworks phase
Forming the skeleton of Echo's Awakening
In this phase, our group made a very simple mock up of the game using components that are used in the Nintendo Switch layout. The work was divided equally amongst team members. I chose to create the data and save slot screens for the casual player version of Echo's Awakening.
refinement phase
Finalizing the screen design
I created the final design of the screens from the wireframes above and created custom game assents that were used throughout the game.
Game assets
Enter the world of Echo's Dreams
Reflection
What did I learn from this?
I learned that I had improved in my skills related to research in this project. When I first learned Goal Directed Design, I didn't have a firm grasp on certain phases such as creating persona hypotheses and user requirements because for me, it's a little more abstract, but I found that I've made massive improvements in that area which shows in the ideas I came up with.
Affinity mapping and coming up with interview questions with my team greatly helped me understand the vision and purpose Echo Awakening strives to achieve. I appreciate the chance to dip my toes into game design, and I'm especially proud of the concept art and components I created because they were heavily included in the screens for the game and helped create a cohesive style for the project.
Overall, I improved on what I learned from my first round of Goal Directed Design and experimented with creating the visual design for a game that was outside of the mobile format. These things have increased my versatility with design projects.