2,128 research outputs found

    Developing and evaluating MindMax: promoting mental wellbeing through an Australian Football League-themed app incorporating applied games (including gamification), psychoeducation, and social connectedness

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    Gamification is increasingly being used as a behavioural change strategy to increase engagement with apps and technologies for mental health and wellbeing. While there is promising evidence supporting the effectiveness of individual gamification elements, there remains little evidence for its overall effectiveness. Furthermore, a lack of consistency in how ‘gamification’ and related terms (such as ‘applied games’, an umbrella term of which gamification is one type) are used has been observed within and across multiple academic fields. This contributes to the difficulty of studying gamification and decreases its accessibility to people unfamiliar with applied games. Finally, gamification has also been critiqued by both game developers and by academics for its reliance on extrinsic motivators and for the messages that gamified systems may unintentionally convey. In this context, the aims of this thesis were fourfold: 1) to iteratively co-design and develop a gamified app for mental health and wellbeing, 2) to evaluate the eventuating app, 3) to consolidate literature on gamification for mental health and wellbeing, and 4) to synthesise findings into practical guidelines for implementing gamification for mental health and wellbeing. Chapter 2 reports the first study which addresses the first aim of this thesis. Six participatory design workshops were conducted to support the development of MindMax, an Australian Football League (AFL)-themed mobile phone app aimed at AFL fans (particularly male ones) that incorporates applied games, psychoeducation, and social connectedness. Findings from these workshops were independently knowledge translated and fed back to the software development team, resulting in a MindMax prototype. This prototype was further tested with 15 one-on-one user experience testing interviews at three separate time points to iteratively refine MindMax’s design and delivery of its content. The findings of this study suggest that broadly, participants endorsed a customisable user experience with activities requiring active user participation. These specifications were reflected in the continual software updates made to MindMax. Chapters 3 and 4 report the second and third studies which address the second aim of this thesis. As regular content, performance, and aesthetic updates were applied to MindMax (following the model of the wider tech industry), a naturalistic longitudinal trial, described in Chapter 3, was deemed to be the most appropriate systematic evaluation method. In this study, participants (n=313) were given access to MindMax and asked to use it at their leisure, and surveys were sent out at multiple time points to assess their wellbeing, resilience, and help-seeking intentions. Increases in flourishing (60-day only), sense of connection to MindMax, and impersonal help-seeking intentions were observed over 30 and 60 days, suggesting that Internet-based interventions like MindMax can contribute to their users’ social connectedness and encourage their help-seeking. The third study, described in Chapter 4, reports a secondary analysis of data collected for Chapter 3, and further explores participants’ help-seeking intentions and their links to wellbeing, resilience, gender, and age. An explanatory factor analysis was conducted on Day 1 General Help-Seeking Questionnaire (GHSQ) data (n=530), with the best fitting solution resulting in three factors: personal sources, health professionals, and distal sources. In addition to providing more evidence that younger people aged 16–35 categorise apps and technologies for mental health and wellbeing like MindMax alongside other distal social sources such as phone helplines and work or school, our findings also suggest that the best way to target individuals who are least likely to seek help, particularly men, may be through these distal sources as well. Chapter 5 reports the fourth study, which addresses the third aim. In order to consolidate literature on gamification for mental health and wellbeing, this systematic review identified 70 papers that collectively reported on 50 apps and technologies for improving mental health and wellbeing. These papers were coded for gamification element, mental health and wellbeing domain, and researchers’ justification for applying gamification to improving mental health and wellbeing. This study resulted in two major findings: first, that the current application of gamification for mental health and wellbeing does not resemble the heavily critiqued mainstream application that relies on extrinsic motivators; and second, that many authors of the reviewed papers provided little or no justification for why they applied gamification to their mental health and wellbeing interventions. While the former finding is encouraging, the latter suggests that the gamification of mental health and wellbeing is not theory-driven, and is a cause for concern. Finally, to address the final aim of this thesis, all study learnings were synthesised into practical guidelines for implementing gamification for mental health and wellbeing. First, it is important to assess the suitability of implementing gamification into the intervention. Second, this implementation should ideally be integrated at a deeper, systemic level, with the explicitly qualified intention to support users, evidence-based processes, and user engagement with these processes. Third, it is important to assess the acceptability of this gamified intervention throughout its development, involving all relevant stakeholders (particularly representative end user populations). Fourth, it is important to evaluate the impact of this gamified intervention. Fifth, and finally, comprehensive and detailed documentation of this process should be provided at all stages of this process. This thesis contributes to a growing literature on the increasing importance and relevance of Internet-based resources and apps and technologies for mental health and wellbeing, particularly for young people. Given the dominance of games in society and culture across history, and the increasing contemporary prominence of digital games (also known as video games) in particular, gamification is uniquely positioned to have the potential to make large contributions to mental health and wellbeing research. In this context, this thesis contributes a systematically derived operationalisation of gamification, an evaluation of a gamified app for mental health and wellbeing, and best practice guidelines for implementing gamification for mental health and wellbeing, thereby providing frameworks that future implementations of gamified mental health and wellbeing interventions and initiatives may find useful

    Where interaction design and clinical psychology meet

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    Dissertação de Mestrado em Design de Interação apresentada na Faculdade de Arquitetura em parceria com a Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade de Lisboa para obtenção do grau de Mestre.O objetivo deste projeto final de mestrado é encontrar um ponto comum entre design de interação e psicologia clínica através da exploração do espaço entre sessões de terapia. Este processo foi desenvolvido em co-design entre a autora e um psicólogo clínico. A metodologia aplicada envolveu revisão da literatura de todas as áreas: saúde mental, saúde em dispositivos móveis e saúde electrónica e gamificação, aplicada à saúde. Seguidamente, procedemos à escolha e análise de casos de estudo e a entrevistas exploratórias com vários psicólogos clínicos. A fase de projeto consistiu em wireframes e protótipos de vários graus de fidelidade até chegar a protótipos de alta fidelidade que foi posteriormente usado em testes de usabilidade com pacientes em terapia. Hoje em dia, cada vez mais psicólogos providenciam as suas informações de contacto pessoais, como email ou número de telemóvel, para permitir o contacto, caso os pacientes precisem de apoio extra entre consultas. No entanto, a plataforma não vem tentar substituir a terapia mas sim facilitar um espaço ou um local que permita o paciente continuar a trabalhar no seu progresso entre as sessões, através da criação de exercícios e ferramentas, que foram pensadas em conjunto com o psicólogoABSTRACT: The purpose of this final project was to find a common ground between interaction design and clinical psychology through the exploration of the space in between therapy sessions. This process was done through a co-design between the author and a clinical psychologist. Now-a-days, more and more psychologists give contact information and allow for contact outside of therapy sessions because patients often feel the need to have extra support on their day to daily lives. There isn’t however a platform that allows patients to keep on making progress without a dependency from an answer from the psychologist. The methodology applied involves a literature review of all the areas: mental health, mobile and e-health and gamification, applied to health. Followed by the choice and analysis of case studies and exploratory interviews with several clinical psychologists to better understand the needs of patients as users of the system to be developed. An interaction design project was developed, which consist on wireframes and prototypes of all fidelity types until we reach a high fidelity prototype to test in real patients provided by the clinical psychologist in question. As such, this project aimed to create a system, or a platform that allows the space in between therapy sessions to also be a place of personal development and progress, through a tool created with the aid of the clinical psychologistN/

    Implementation of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in e–Mental Health Apps: Literature Review

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    Background: To address the matter of limited resources for treating individuals with mental disorders, e–mental health has gained interest in recent years. More specifically, mobile health (mHealth) apps have been suggested as electronic mental health interventions accompanied by cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Objective: This study aims to identify the therapeutic aspects of CBT that have been implemented in existing mHealth apps and the technologies used. From these, we aim to derive research gaps that should be addressed in the future. Methods: Three databases were screened for studies on mHealth apps in the context of mental disorders that implement techniques of CBT: PubMed, IEEE Xplore, and ACM Digital Library. The studies were independently selected by 2 reviewers, who then extracted data from the included studies. Data on CBT techniques and their technical implementation in mHealth apps were synthesized narratively. Results: Of the 530 retrieved citations, 34 (6.4%) studies were included in this review. mHealth apps for CBT exploit two groups of technologies: technologies that implement CBT techniques for cognitive restructuring, behavioral activation, and problem solving (exposure is not yet realized in mHealth apps) and technologies that aim to increase user experience, adherence, and engagement. The synergy of these technologies enables patients to self-manage and self-monitor their mental state and access relevant information on their mental illness, which helps them cope with mental health problems and allows self-treatment. Conclusions: There are CBT techniques that can be implemented in mHealth apps. Additional research is needed on the efficacy of the mHealth interventions and their side effects, including inequalities because of the digital divide, addictive internet behavior, lack of trust in mHealth, anonymity issues, risks and biases for user groups and social contexts, and ethical implications. Further research is also required to integrate and test psychological theories to improve the impact of mHealth and adherence to the e–mental health interventions

    Conceptual Ambiguity Surrounding Gamification and Serious Games in Health Care: Literature Review and Development of Game-Based Intervention Reporting Guidelines (GAMING)

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    Background: In health care, the use of game-based interventions to increase motivation, engagement, and overall sustainability of health behaviors is steadily becoming more common. The most prevalent types of game-based interventions in health care research are gamification and serious games. Various researchers have discussed substantial conceptual differences between these 2 concepts, supported by empirical studies showing differences in the effects on specific health behaviors. However, researchers also frequently report cases in which terms related to these 2 concepts are used ambiguously or even interchangeably. It remains unclear to what extent existing health care research explicitly distinguishes between gamification and serious games and whether it draws on existing conceptual considerations to do so. Objective: This study aims to address this lack of knowledge by capturing the current state of conceptualizations of gamification and serious games in health care research. Furthermore, we aim to provide tools for researchers to disambiguate the reporting of game-based interventions. Methods: We used a 2-step research approach. First, we conducted a systematic literature review of 206 studies, published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research and its sister journals, containing terms related to gamification, serious games, or both. We analyzed their conceptualizations of gamification and serious games, as well as the distinctions between the two concepts. Second, based on the literature review findings, we developed a set of guidelines for researchers reporting on game-based interventions and evaluated them with a group of 9 experts from the field. Results: Our results show that less than half of the concept mentions are accompanied by an explicit definition. To distinguish between the 2 concepts, we identified four common approaches: implicit distinction, synonymous use of terms, serious games as a type of gamified system, and distinction based on the full game dimension. Our Game-Based Intervention Reporting Guidelines (GAMING) consist of 25 items grouped into four topics: conceptual focus, contribution, mindfulness about related concepts, and individual concept definitions. Conclusions: Conceptualizations of gamification and serious games in health care literature are strongly heterogeneous, leading to conceptual ambiguity. Following the GAMING can support authors in rigorous reporting on study results of game-based interventions

    A Domain-Specific Modeling approach for a simulation-driven validation of gamified learning environments Case study about teaching the mimicry of emotions to children with autism

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    Game elements are rarely explicit when designing serious games or gamified learning activities. We think that the overall design, including instructional design aspects and gamification elements, should be validate by involved experts in the earlier stage of the general design & develop process. We tackle this challenge by proposing a Domain-specific Modeling orientation to our proposals: a metamodeling formalism to capture the gamified instructional design model, and a specific validation process involving domain experts. The validation includes a static verification , by using this formalism to model concrete learning sessions based on concrete informations from real situations described by experts, and a dynamic verification, by developing a simplified simulator for 'execut-ing' the learning sessions scenarios with experts. This propositions are part of the EmoTED research project about a learning application, the mimicry of emotions, for children with ASD. It aims at reinforce face-to-face teaching sessions with therapists by training sessions at home with the supervision of the children's parents. This case-study will ground our proposals and their experimentations

    Autism and Inclusive Education: Recommendations for improvement during and after COVID-19

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    Context: COVID-19 has disproportionately affected the autism community yet also provided an opportunity to improve education delivery. There are several policies to ensure education for autistic children, but there are still gaps that need to be filled.  Policy Options: This policy brief analyses several interventions designed to create a more inclusive education environment for autistic children. The four policy options described and analyzed are: Teacher assistants focussing on children with special education needs, Peer Mentoring Interventions (PMI), Digitalization of Education, and Gamification. Recommendations: The analysis concludes that PMI and Gamification would be the most feasible to implement. PMI can improve the dynamic between autistic children and their neurotypical peers. Gamification enables personalization to educational needs and fluid transition to at-home education. Subsequently, the European Union already invests in gamification, making the step smaller to invest in gamification for inclusive education. &nbsp

    Unethical Gamification: A Literature Review

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    Gamification has become a mainstay approach in designing engaging systems, practices, and cultures across practically all walks of human life. However, as gamification mainly attempts to affect individual psychological states, motivations, attitudes, and behaviors, conscious consideration of ethical aspects, as well as underlying values and premises, is very much warranted. However, gamification research and practice have sprung up rather rapidly and myopically as boosted by the contemporary hype related to technology and games, which has led to the relative dismissal of ethical considerations in relation to gamification. In order to map these considerations and the current state of the discussion in gamification literature, we systematically reviewed research related to ethics, and particularly, possible identified and discussed harms of gamification. The corpus reveals that psychological distress, exploitation, lack of performance, and privacy issues are the most commonly contemplated possible harms, with different frequencies based on the game elements, types, and contexts

    Wearables at work:preferences from an employee’s perspective

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    This exploratory study aims to obtain a first impression of the wishes and needs of employees on the use of wearables at work for health promotion. 76 employ-ees with a mean age of 40 years old (SD ±11.7) filled in a survey after trying out a wearable. Most employees see the potential of using wearable devices for workplace health promotion. However, according to employees, some negative aspects should be overcome before wearables can effectively contribute to health promotion. The most mentioned negative aspects were poor visualization and un-pleasantness of wearing. Specifically for the workplace, employees were con-cerned about the privacy of data collection

    Serious Gaming for Behaviour Change: A Systematic Review

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    Over the years, there has been a significant increase in the adoption of game-based interventions for behaviour change associated with many fields such as health, education, and psychology. This is due to the significance of the players’ intrinsic motivation that is naturally generated to play games and the substantial impact they can have on players. Many review papers measure the effectiveness of the use of gaming on changing behaviours; however, these studies neglect the game features involved in the game design process, which have an impact of stimulating behaviour change. Therefore, this paper aimed to identify game design mechanics and features that are reported to commonly influence behaviour change during and/or after the interventions. This paper identified key theories of behaviour change that inform the game design process, providing insights that can be adopted by game designers for informing considerations on the use of game features for moderating behaviour in their own games
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