Play against depression!

Ironhack gave us a project which had to be focused on wellness. In group of 2, with my working partner Lina_we decided to work on depression and low spirits. We have to create a mobile application which will respond to the problem we will find in our secondary research and interviews.

Wellness this year is an important and tricky topic because of COVID and quarantine, but it is only one of the many causes of depressive disorder. We will try to improve the daily well-being of people.

Our target? People who are depressed, those who have had phases of depression, those who have had it in the past.

The brief? Create a mobile application related to well-being.

We decided first to do secondary research to benchmark mobile applications which already proposed a service for depressed people (game, solution against depression, factors, help) and looking for general information about this pathology.

• 19% of french population is depressed, but 50% of major depressions go untreated.
• 150 millions of psychotropic boxes are prescribed each year.

We chose 2 competitors apps:

Elude is a psycho-educational game that helps family and friends of depressed people to better understand the different stages of depression.

StopBlues is an informative app which explains factors of depression and brings some help and solutions to the user.

Quantitative research: After this step we created a quantitative survey to enrich our secondary research.

Quantitative survey was really difficult to share, people depressed usually don’t want to participate in these kinds of studies even if it’s anonymous and not related to depression in title.

We observed that almost 66% of participants already had a depressive period and most of them didn’t have a professional follow-up. The most common causes of depression are work, psychological or physical ailments, and family problems.

Qualitative research: Then we interviewed 5 people who are depressed or had a depressive period in the past. The depression for each of them was caused by a different factor.

2 main gain points stand out:

• The motivation to get by their own
• Capacity to put their feeling aside

Both could be gain and pain points, but we kept them in gain points.

Concerning pain points:

• They don’t feel legitimate to complain
• They are afraid to stay in this situation a long time
• They don’t want to confide so people don’t understand them and take distances
• They have physical pains caused to stress
• They have restless sleep

Even if their depression is not caused by the same factor, many feelings and observations are shared by the interviewees.

We have defined 4 HMW and we have categorized them:

1. DETERMINE -> How might we externalize their problem?
2. LEGITIMIZE -> How might we persuade them that they can be helped?
3. SOLVE -> How might we show them that there is a way out?
4. RELATIVIZE -> How might we encourage them to try several solutions?

Our concept! 👾

During our interviews we asked to interviewee what they expect from a mobile app which helps them to improve their well-being.

• The interviewees wanted a playful and relaxed application so we decided to through a gamification of our app with an adapted universe.
• Many of them need daily goals to keep their mind on things and forget their discomfort. We will provide in the game missions and awards in each game play to encourage them to do memory, verbalization and relaxation exercises.
• We observed in interviews that depressed people have difficulty expressing their feelings or simply do not wish to confide in someone about their discomfort. Having a virtual avatar will help them to externalize their feelings.
• Some information about their pathology is not always clear or accessible. We will include in our game a “community” section, the user will have the possibility to get specific information linked to feeling, brain, therapy, etc. We will display in this section urgency numbers if the user ever needs further professional help and feels ready to talk about it.
• Each person need solution, we can’t bring them a scientific solution but we can help them to better understand their feeling and test different kind of exercises to improve their well-being through game play missions.

Thanks to all of these feedbacks we created Alba’s World. We chose this name for our game because “Alba” in Spanish and Gallic translates as “daybreak”. The dawn represents renewal and hope.

In the game the user will customize it’s avatar, choose the game design atmosphere he would like, navigate on a map to realise it’s missions. Each mission will be related to it’s feelings, good memories, improvement of well-being.

Between each game play, design colors will change to let the user know that he will still be able to navigate on the map, but that he will have to wait 3 hours before he can play a new game. We want to avoid creating an addiction to the game.

Our user flow

Usability test!

We asked users to do feedback about design, navigation, usability of the app. To stay in a playful and not scientific application we also asked the opinion of a psychotherapist.

GAME PLAY PAGE

• Displayed the objectives of the game play takes us out of the game, users feel like they are undergoing an analysis
• Scroll through the game parts horizontally
• Psychotherapist’s insight: “to make it credible, it has to stay playful and ludic, not scientific”

SCIENTIFIC NOTIFICATION

• Notification interrupt the game, the users asked us to delete it
• Setting icon in the bottom right corner may disturb the player, the use of the touchscreen with the placement of this icon is not practical
• Psychotherapist’s insight: “Demarcate the app as a help to feel better, not as a substitute to a professional”

END FIRST GAME PLAY

• It sounds like an order for the user, not like a simple information -> write it in a positive way
• Psychotherapist’s insight: “There is not any reminder concerning the fact that it is a game and not a professional follow up” -> we add on hi-fi, a reminder in community section

Which colors, ambiancy?

Our moodboard stands out in two atmospheres, days and night to differentiate game play with and without avatar missions. The characters of the game as well as the elements making up the scenery will be soft and pleasant to look at visually.

Bright green tones will dominate the design of our game as the user completes missions across the map. Green is a soothing and invigorating color. The world of the game will be fantastic and vegetal, allowing the user to escape from reality for a moment.

The color blue is associated with serenity and dream. Once all the missions of the gameplay have been successfully completed, the atmosphere of the game will be in shades of blue to soothe the user.

As we couldn’t create a game background and our characters, we took inspiration from existing games. We selected the Ori game for the backgrounds because the atmosphere of this fantastic game and the colors matched our expectations.

Ori and the blind forest

Ori and the Blind forest

For the choice of the avatar we used the Wildstar game (which is unfortunately no longer in distribution) because many avatar images were available (profile, back, face, etc.).

Wildstar, Aurin female character

And finally for our characters, we used the champions Teemo, Sona from the game League of Legends, Baymax from the cartoon The New Heroes and the pokemon Toucannon.

All these characters were chosen because they inspire confidence and each one is adapted to the proposed mission. For example Baymax that we named in our game Bobby, leads our user to do a meditation mission. So we wanted a gentle character with a reassuring profile for this mission.

Teemo from LOL

Sona from LOL

Baymax from Big Hero

Toucannon from Pokemon

The prototype!

This project was really cool and interesting, I love the gaming universe and colored applications.

Working on the choice of the game’s atmosphere, avatars, and proposed missions was a real challenge for Lina and I because we didn’t want our users to think that they were being analyzed on this application or that they thought it was a substitute for professional monitoring. Finding the right balance was possible thanks to the advice of a psychotherapist, experienced gamers and people suffering from depression.

We learned how to transform a problem statement into an entertainment application that helps the user indirectly to improve his daily well-being.

Thanks for your attention! 🙏