The essential experience of our game has been established and that is: Providing the experience of immersion as a tool for physical and emotional regulation through effective sound design and visuals. We are now at the point of the project where we are thinking about how we might achieve this essential experience.

To begin the ideation into how this experience might look, sound and what interactions may be included, we have carried out the Lotus design technique. The aim of this task is to begin with one subject, which for us was our project aims, and then create a flower petal mind-map to branch out, creating points that are linked to this subject. Then you repeat this task for those eight contextual points you created.

We began with project aims because these include our intentions as designers and describes the experience we want to create. The experience aims to act as a tool for mental health management, providing a space for the user to regulate their emotional and physical symptoms of stress and anxiety, so therefore key project aims include:

• Emotional regulation
• Physical regulation
• Immersion
• Engage Senses
• Benefit mental health
• Re-gain sense of control
• A space to feel comfort/ease
• Reflection

Some of the ideas we came up with, using this technique, to consider what features we may include in our games design include some topics that we have previously researched so already have a great understanding of. These include self-help/regulation techniques, how we can stimulate the players senses and tools or features that can be used to create immersion.

This activity has helped us to drive our creation of game ideas by establishing and documenting the important factors and considerations we need to be aware of throughout the development of the project. This map we have created will now be used to look back on to evolve our ideas as they are found and developed.