Play to manage stress

CHALLENGE
In the competitive environment at CMU unmanaged stress, leave students feeling anxious and depressed.

SOLUTION
An environment-interactive narrative gameplay as a means of covert stress reduction. Inspired by the design of escape rooms, Mystery Run is a chapter based game which gets users to engage in stress reducing physical activities on and off screen in the efforts of solving a mystery.

Mystery Run: Helping students better manage stress

Carnegie Mellon University l 3 Weeks l 4 Members l Research & Interaction Design

PROBLEM

Competitive Nature

Coursework, social pressure and relationships are primary reasons for stress on campus

High Stress Environment

More that 70% students were stressed over the last week.

Current Apps don't work

Existing stress reduction applications are too explicit

“ ... undergrads have an ongoing leaderboard of who is the most stressed out. Given the competitive nature of the students, this becomes exhausting and unhealthy.”

OUR SOLUTION

A real-world interactive game that guides users through a series of stress-reducing activities disguised as required steps to uncover a mystery.

50 People Surveyed l 20 Precedents Studied l 15 Hours of Field Observations l 15 User Tests
9 Literature Reviews l 5 rounds of Iterative Design l 4 Stakeholder Interviews

Our list of final activities was determined by user testing and card sorting

4 persuasive principle used in game design

User Insights

“ I really enjoyed the novelty tasks of blowing air to get rid of the dust .”

Students enjoyed unexpected activities such as blowing the dust off the screen and a developed narrative

“ Finding the number was too easy, the challenging tasks were more enticing”

They also engaged in tasks that were more challenging

“ I didn’t realize in the moment, but it was refreshing to not stare at the screen”

Users were curious when they had to complete a task offline - many times they smiled as soon as they put their phone down

Click through the prototype: