Play to manage stress
Overview
Through research, such as observations, interviews & card sorting we identified that unmanaged stress in the competitive environment at CMU, leaves students anxious and depressed. Mystery Run is an environment-interactive narrative gameplay as a means of covert stress reduction. Inspired by the design of escape rooms, Mystery Run is a chapter based game which gets users to engage in stress reducing physical activities on and off screen in the efforts of solving a mystery.
Role
Research, & Interaction Design
Team
3 people; 2 weeks
Type: Studio Coursework
“ ... undergrads have an ongoing leaderboard of who is the most stressed out. Given the competitive nature of the students, this becomes exhausting and unhealthy.”
Competitive Nature
Coursework, social pressure and relationships are primary reasons for stress on campus
High Stress Environment
More that 70% students were stressed over the last week.
Current Apps don't work
Existing stress reduction applications are too explicit
A real-world interactive game that guides users through a series of stress-reducing activities disguised as required steps to uncover a mystery.
50 People Surveyed l 20 Precedents Studied l 15 Hours of Field Observations l 15 User Tests l 9 Literature Reviews l 5 rounds of Iterative Design l 4 Stakeholder Interviews
Our list of final activities was determined by user testing and card sorting
4 persuasive principle used in game design
“ I really enjoyed the novelty tasks of blowing air to get rid of the dust .”
Students enjoyed unexpected activities such as blowing the dust off the screen and a developed narrative
“ Finding the number was too easy, the challenging tasks were more enticing”
They also engaged in tasks that were more challenging
“ I didn’t realize in the moment, but it was refreshing to not stare at the screen”
Users were curious when they had to complete a task offline - many times they smiled as soon as they put their phone down