Gamifying a VR phobia therapy app
How and why shall we apply game design principles to serious applications
Hi, I’m Paul. During the 6th semester of my Bachelor’s degree in computer science at the High School of Engineering and Architecture in Fribourg, I had to carry out a project about gamification, in collaboration with the HumanTech Institute.
About the project
This project is the follow-up of the Master’s thesis of another student, Marco Mattei. The goal of his project was to develop a virtual reality (VR) app to help people suffering from specific phobias confront their fear. This was brilliantly reached with the creation of 2 separate 3D environments in which arachnophobes (who fear spiders) & resp. acrophobes (who fear heights) can move freely using an HTC Vive, while the therapist manages the world’s elements (spider appearance/behaviour or elevator altitude).
The goal of my project was to enhance Mr. Mattei’s work by adding gamification elements to it. This would allow patients to use the application autonomously while also inciting them to interact with their fear more & more. Note that the focus was solely on the arachnophobia part, the acrophobia treatment scene has not been gamified.
But, what is gamification?
A gamified application is not to be confused with a game. Gamification consists in adding game-design elements and principles to products whose 1st purpose is not related to a game. Thus, it shouldn’t take the user away from the use for which the application was designed (in this case, treating a phobia). Gamification simply helps to improve user engagement by keeping a user-centered approach.
How to apply gamification?
The early stage of this project was all about research and design. It was essential to first analyze similar products in order to collect information about what is efficient and what isn’t. Then, I had to identify the best practices to use when adding gamification to an application.
Making the application’s use autonomous
To make sure the app can be used without any assistance, I had to design a simple workflow and an intuitive user interface (UI). Multiple levels have been created with the aim to match milestones of a real exposure therapy. Each level is defined by a simple spider interaction objective (e.g. “Touch the spider with a tool”) and comes with 6 different difficulties (cartoonish or realistic spider, immobile or moving, alone or surrounded by other spiders).
The level selection is made through a UI displayed on a screen in the VR world, and the user has a pointer to click on the buttons. Filters are available to simplify the selection.
Encouraging user engagement
Common game design principles were applied in order to make patients want to use the application more. During each level, the user gain points based on the difficulty of the task and the duration of the interaction with the spider. This gives the patient a feedback on the progression of its ability to face its fear. Then, a medal is assigned based on the score. This makes the patient feel that its progress is being recognized, while also encouraging it to play the levels again and again to improve its score (with the aim of winning gold medals). In the same perspective, global achievements (who aren’t necessarily related with spider interactions) have been defined. For example, an achievement is won after having completed 25 levels, another after having won at least 1 gold medal.
Result
Now, what?
Even though the objective of this project was reached, some improvements could be made. First of all, user customization is lacking in this application. Indeed, this aspect is often mentioned in gamification’s best practices as it helps making the user feel familiar with the product.
Secondly, the diversity of the levels could be improved. The various interaction types and difficulties are nice, but after some time using the app, the tasks can become boring. This is mostly due to the fact that the spider is always located at the exact same place. Adding some randomness to the level “generation” would allow to avoid this problem.
Because of a lack of time at the end of the project, I couldn’t make proper user tests. The only feedback I could get was from my roommates and my girlfriend. They were however all very positive, as none of them had difficulties using the app (without any assistance) even though they’re not specially friends with IT and video games in general. It may be very interesting and constructive to test my work on real arachnophobes, and on a long-term basis to see how effective it is.
Thank you for reading my article! I hope it was interesting enough to awake your interest in gamification of mental health applications and in general :)
