STEPPING STONES BOARD GAME
Improving Mental Health by Integrating Play
This was a solo 10-day design-charette challenge that explored the integration of play into daily lives and incorporation of the same within the context of our personal environment.
Since mental health and wellbeing board games aren't a norm in India, I'm working with 2 doctors and my mentor at school to further develop this game and make it content-rich, post which we plan to run tests in Srishti's art therapy centre as
well as in local group therapy centres in Karnataka, India.
Client /
Design Charette at Srishti
Role /
Research+strategy
+execution
​
Status/
On-going
​
Year /
2017
To better understand the need to integrate play with mental health programs, I conducted in depth primary and secondary research, which helped me narrow my focus down to certain aspects of mental health that applied to not just mental health patients, but almost everyone - young or old. To effectively breakdown my data into meaningful information, I used the 5W and 1H tool, I started to notice a repeated pattern of words that brought my attention to some basic challenges people faced in their day-to-day lives. The struggle to communicate and collaborate on topics circling emotions and feelings emerged as a primary pain point. Incorporating this line of inquiry to the context of my personal environment, I started to see that communication and lack of collaboration was also one of the primary challenges faced by a family member who was suffering from depression. As a solution, I created a therapeutic board game that could aid the mental health ecosystem by engaging people in conversations using play techniques.Please take a look at the process document at the end of the page to get more details about primary research, secondary research, and key insights
