The experience of the game intends to provide the player with the opportunity to use the space to help regulate their emotional and physical symptoms of stress and anxiety. It will provide them with the environment, the sounds and the visuals, to successfully monitor and manage their well-being in a safe space. To appropriately design the space for this function, we need to identify some key interactions that will work for this.
I began this research and ideation process by first looking into the types of therapy that are available and what approaches or techniques are used in them, as well as how they work towards specific issues. Many of these techniques required the presence of a therapist or included the motion of speaking out-loud the patients problems. The methods suggested and used in our experience must be able to be practiced by an individual without external support, solely assisted through the interaction in the space, with the sound and visual design.
Therefore, some research is required into the self-practiced techniques used inside and outside of therapy, that are proven to be successful for emotional and physical regulation. This could be techniques to ground the player, self-help activities for wellness or environmental interaction techniques to assists focus or self-reflection.
From my research in the previous document Therapy; Types and Techniques , I have picked out a few approaches that may be adaptable for game features or mechanics.
Behavioural modelling
In a therapeutic setting, behaviour modelling is purposeful and positive, teaching clients healthier ways of behaving. The patient learns to practice positive, helpful behaviours through the observation of others/visuals. We learn not only by doing but by watching what others do. The player could learn positive behaviours and methods of self-regulation through visual learning.
Game: This could potentially be through visual storytelling, or it could be that the player is asked engage with gamified self-regulation methods that allow them to learn positive behaviours.
Identification
In therapy, identifying a problem and the cause of it allows the patient to learn about the connections between their emotions and their behaviour. Identification of a problem, the source and the solution allows the individual to firstly form a better understanding of themselves and their feelings, and also find comfort in the fact that their issues is temporary and there can be something done to change it.
Game: The way that this idea can be reflected into our game design is allowing the player to explore a series of problems, causes and solutions and testing them to find a resolution. But he identification of these elements is what matters most, rather than the actual matching of the problems to solutions. It could be that the player just needs to explore the environment they have been supplied and identify some feature or tool, which has an understandable application to real life problems.