Boggart
Uses narrative games and scientific therapy methods to help teenagers accept and overcome their fears
Boggart was a team project for a junior year interaction design course. The course requires us to deeply understand a psychological knowledge and apply it to a real social problem.
Finally we designed Boggart, a concept therapy APP helping teenagers accept and overcome their fears by building a pixie adventure worldview and performing light self-healing in a gamified way, using positive psychology principles and the extended Character Strengths and Virtues tests.
DATE : 2019
ROLE : MOTION | UX DESIGNER
TEAM : Qixuan Hu & Shangli Qian & Shuqi Tang
Problem Statement
Issue: Specific Phobias, though not as severe as PTSD, can still significantly affect an individual's life. Research shows that milder phobias can often self-resolve. Susceptibility to anxiety disorders is influenced by life experiences, psychological traits, genetics, and even gender. Additionally, a childhood environment lacking confidence, being overly protective, or suppressing emotions can contribute to the development of an anxious personality.
Target User : Growing Teenagers, often first seen between ages 15 and 20.
Design Principle
1.
2.
Using strong applicable psychological principles and treatment methods to provide users with self-healing and self-growth opportunities.
Designing a gamified experience that attracts users can benefit from product maintenance over time.
Story & Characters
An adventurous journey to rescue Boggart...
We divided the healing process into three phases based on Christopher Vogler's The Hero's Journey framework and built a pixie adventure worldview to help users achieve an immersive and lasting experience.
Prototype
A gamified self-healing therapy APP
By combining various features such as interactive games, AR, and a community, users can be more motivated and engaged in consistently using this product
Level 1
Sphinx's Secret
"Admit fear, it's no big deal"
Tell Boggart what you're afraid of
At this level, the user will be exposed to a game environment related to fear and gradually find and mark the key thing related to their fear.
Level 2
Echo
"Shouted out of your fear"
Choose a place where you feel safe and at ease
This level requires the user to imagine and shout out their fear of things in a relaxed environment to gradually achieve a desensitization state, which must be repeated several times to achieve a high enough decibel.
Level 5
Alice's Dream
"Still fear?"
Reveal your true fears with AR
This level emphasizes the role of mindfulness, in which users develop a more open mind toward the fearful object by constantly exposing themselves to it and imagining the other side of it through AR animation.
Level 7
Muse's Hemline
"Actually it is beautiful"
Appreciate your fear through art
Users at this level will appreciate fear from an aesthetic perspective by watching fear-related movies. At the same time, through the sharing, interaction, and encouragement of the community, users can face the fear treatment more actively.
Workflow
We have built a complete system of characters, mission system, a feedback system, communities, etc. We hope that users can have a friendly and encouraged fear therapy experience at Boggart.
SAY SOMETHING
This project was my first relatively complete UX work, and when I put it together again in 2022, I found that there was a lot that could be improved. The psychological treatment of adolescents is a serious topic, yet we ignore the role of professional doctors and parents when considering stakeholders. At that time, we considered that we could help adolescents treat fear in a lightweight, daily way, but we still needed to do the final treatment effect feedback through more professional medical standards, which was missing in this project.
I realized that I had a more multidimensional and mature perspective on user research in continuous UX learning after reviewing this project, so I kept the previous scheme as a milestone memorial. If the opportunity arises, I would like to communicate with scholars in medical and health-related fields and conduct additional research on this topic.
