Qualitative study into adapting persuasive games for mental wellbeing to personality, stressors, and attitudes

Ana Ciocarlan, Judith Masthoff, Nir Oren

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingPublished conference contribution

13 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Our wider research project investigates the design of a persuasive game for preventing mental health problems and improving subjective wellbeing in a student population. In this paper, we explore how persuasive game elements and interactions can be adapted to different student personalities, active stressors and attitudes. In six focus groups we investigated (1) which key stressors are experienced by students, (2) what characteristics of students need to be considered for adapting game interactions and challenges, and (3) which approaches to personalisation could be applied. Participants were shown stories about a fictional student, conveying high and low levels of three personality traits (Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability and Extraversion), levels of active stressors, and varying attitudes towards change. Participants discussed how to tailor game interactions, activities and challenges to the characteristics of the fictional student. In general, participants perceived real-time personalisation using implicit measures as more effective, but recognised explicit profiling as a valuable complementary method. These findings have implications for the personalisation and design of persuasive game based interventions for health.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationUMAP 2017 - Adjunct Publication of the 25th Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization
EditorsMarko Tkalcic, Dhaval Thakker, Panagiotis Germanakos, Kalina Yacef, Cecile Paris, Olga Santos
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages402-407
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9781450350679
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 9 Jul 2017
Event25th ACM International Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation, and Personalization, UMAP 2017 - Bratislava, Slovakia
Duration: 9 Jul 201712 Jul 2017

Conference

Conference25th ACM International Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation, and Personalization, UMAP 2017
Country/TerritorySlovakia
CityBratislava
Period9/07/1712/07/17

Keywords

  • Adaptation
  • Attitude
  • Mental health
  • Personality
  • Persuasive games
  • Stress
  • Wellbeing

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