ELISE MACKELPRANG
Engagement
Over the course of our time in South Korea, we were given a challenge to identify problems within our environment and find solutions that we could develop into our own MVP’s. A problem I personally identified in Korea was the high rates of suicide and depression that plagues the country. Today, South Korea is placed as number 2 in the world for the highest rates of suicide and depression. This is especially prominent in their youth population and their elderly population, and the solution is a difficult one to address when seeking mental health assistance is socially frowned upon.
How do you address a population that doesn’t want to acknowledge mental illness? How can you help an entire civilization cope with things such as stress and depression in a significant and anonymous manner? The solution honestly isn’t easy, but it was something I was determined to figure out.
Thanks to the connections of the University of Utah, students were given the chance to intern with a number of different startup companies, and I had the luck to intern with Happify, a company that uses positive psychology to teach coping mechanisms and improve the mental health of their app users. For the rest of the semester I was assigned the task of competitive research. What current applications existed in the market that provided similar services to Happify? What techniques and methods did these competitors use to appeal to their selected market, and what sort of impact did it have on their customers? Many focused on the medical aspect of their application, working as a source of organizing thoughts and moods in mildly engaging manners.
It was from studying these different companies that I received my own inspiration for my MVP. If I could create an application that captured user interest for longer periods of time my product could be more effective. Furthermore, if I could incorporate engaging elements the encouraged routine and habits I could improve the behavior of the user. By making positive psychology and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy into a game that demands investment from the player, I strongly suspected that I could have not only a wider reach but greater user retention in comparison to other competitors such as Pacifica or the seemingly endless number of psychology applications.
I was specifically inspired to pursue the topic of mental health in South Korea after researching the effects that depression and suicide has held on the families of the country. My mother's family all live in Seoul, and many undergo stressful situations and demanding lifestyles that have proven detrimental to other families. South Korea has become a very competitive country, and has dedicated all of their efforts to becoming a globalized nation that can compete with other countries. While this has been effective for them economically, it has come with the steep cost of undermining traditions and family values, which has created a lack of identity within the newer generation and a lack of hope within the older generations as members may feel displaced from their original roles.
More than ever I believe that it is vital to stay strong to Korean traditions, and that there is a mental and spiritual strength to be gained by embracing your position in the family and looking forward with a positive outlook with a desire to care for the elderly and the young.
All of these ideas ended up being culminated in Hilltop, where players are exposed to a story that has characters undergoing similar burdens that a player may empathize with: characters trapped in poverty, the backlash of abuse, cause and effect of depression, etc. The young Lord, or the player, will be responsible for acting as a guide to his subjects who may be burdened with these mental ailments, and likewise, players will have to make use of their own coping mechanisms learned through the gameplay mechanics that encourage being out doors, reflecting on personal burdens, and other similar activities that urge individuals to discover methods of coping while also exposing them to stories and perspectives of other characters.
Happify’s model encourages their users to exercise, to recognize hardship when it may trigger some mental depression or anxiety, and to use positive associations to improve overall mood. Likewise, I aim to improve users moods by not only encouraging activities that promote better mental health, but to use the stories of Hilltop to increase a player’s capacity to hold empathy towards others. The product's gameplay will emphasize the player's mental health as much as it will their emotional health throughout their experience with Hilltop.
Learning more about Happify and similar products are what inspired me to integrate interactive storytelling with CBT and Positive Psychology. There is still a lot to learn about in the mental health field, and field of psychology has more than enough work to do with future mental illness, but if my stories can appeal to the hearts of the player, and teach them simple and profound techniques to improve their quality of life, then nothing else would ever give me greater satisfaction.