In the fall of 2017, I took Experience Design 1, and it genuinely changed my life. The professor was incredible, and the class engaging, but my introduction to experience design completely shifted how I thought about design.
The final assignment for that class was an open-ended group project, and my group wanted to focus on mental health. My group's final project was a card game that simulated what it's like to be depressed, and through structured game play, built empathy for people who struggle with depression.
This was a favorite project of mine, and I wasn't finished with it. Two years later, I continued working on the game on my own. I restructured the game play process, remade the card design system, and started making a graphic to show game play structure.
It's not done yet, but as a passion project of mine, it's in for the long haul. As someone who struggles with depression, I want others to know that they aren't alone, and to be able to recognize the signs in themselves or others. It's especially important in college-age people, because of the drastic transitions and pressures at that age. Below, you can read about the process through the years to create the Depression Game.
My group, composed of two friends and I, knew two things going into our final project: we wanted to do something with mental illness, and we wanted the project to actually matter. We felt an app or a website was too easy to ignore; we wanted to make something that changed people.
Before we made any plans, we did research. We created a short, anonymous survey about experiences with mental illness to send out to our peers. There were a few notable trends that stood out. When asked how many people they knew with anxiety and/or depression, more than half said “more than 10.” Over 80% of people said they didn’t find it hard to empathize with people dealing with anxiety or depression, and only 50% of people said they were comfortable talking about their depression or anxiety.
From this research, we gathered that mental illness was more prevalent among our age group than we expected, and that even if you didn’t personally struggle with anxiety or depression, there’s a good chance you knew a couple of people who did. Mental illness suffers from a lot of stigma, and it’s never been easy to discuss. Therefore, we decided our project would be about creating empathy for people struggling with mental illness.
As the next step in our research process, each group member conducted an anonymous, personal interview with someone close to us. At this point, we were still planning on focusing on both anxiety and depression. The personal interviews helped us realize that there were significant experiential differences between anxiety and depression, and that we probably didn’t have the scope to tackle both. We therefore narrowed our project down to just depression.
We interviewed the president of a mental-health advocacy group on campus to better understand the importance of how we talk about mental illness. But it’s not just talking about it—to destigmatize mental illness, we must share our experiences and show how common it really is. The interview also yielded an important idea for us: we must be able to adapt our presentation of mental illness so that we can better communicate the reality of these complex situations.
We also conducted research through literature about how mental illness affects young people, and how people personally experience mental illness. Our research seemed to point to greater empathy being successful in fighting stigma, so we focused our project on creating empathy. It seemed like the most useful and productive way to make a meaningful difference with people who don’t understand depression.
We briefly looked into card game theory, but didn’t spend on lot of time there, because we didn’t want our project to be fun. We wanted it be played like a game, but the tone was much more controlled and structured. We wanted people to take it seriously, so we kept the tone serious.
My group was lucky, because in the last stages of research and development, the entire class participated in an affinity diagram about mental illness on campus. The affinity diagram exercise, which was done silently, started with everyone writing down concepts related to depression and anxiety on sticky notes. This method precludes judgement, and puts everyone on the same level.
Then we shifted the stickies around into groups, in what I thought was the most important step. The silence allowed everyone to group and categorize all the concepts without the hierarchy or judgement that comes with group collaboration.
We finally had a lively group discussion about naming each group of stickies; it took us a while to decide on titles, and they weren’t always obvious. The final groups we settled on: “university resources,” “what helps/coping/dealing with,” “discussion,” “who affected,” “feelings,” “stigma,” “relationships,” “suicide,” “habits,” “schoolwork,” “habits/lifestyle,” and “impact on life."
After we got the groups down, we made a final reorganization of some stickies. The whole process really helped my group better understand all the issues involved in how people experience depression and anxiety.
Our game had two main target audiences: people who don’t understand depression, and young people who don’t know about it yet. The first group of people are those who think depression means just being sad, and that you can simply choose to not be sad anymore. That’s not how depression works, and it’s a harmful attitude to perpetuate.
For the other group—young people who don’t know about depression—the main goal was to inform and communicate the experience of depression so that they could recognize it in themselves or their friends, and take the right steps to help them.
There were three rounds, and in each, the roles of cards and chips evolved. In the first round, each person drew and read aloud a Situation Card. These presented a situation that had a green outcome (mentally healthy response), and a gray outcome (depressed response). The player drew a chip from their opaque bag of chips; a green chip meant green outcome, and you'd add the points from the card. A gray chip meant you subtracted the points.
In the first round, players don’t yet know that their ratios skew much more toward gray. They pull gray chips time and time again, subtracting points from their ever-diminishing score. This cumulation of negativity represents the powerlessness and hopelessness that depression causes. The players also keep the chips they draw and their score to themselves, to represent the isolating nature of depression. At the end of the first round, there's a guided discussion about how people are feeling.
In the second round, three aspects change. First, players learn about their skewed green-gray chip ratios. This simulates being diagnosed with depression; although it doesn’t change anything, it really helps to know about the problem, and to know that it isn’t just you. Second, players now reveal the chip they drew, rather than keep it secret. This functions to show players that it's easier to weather bad times when you can be open with those around you. Third, a new type of card is introduced: external factors. They can be positive, like therapy, or negative, like the death of a pet. There will always be external factors in life, and sometimes they are beyond our control. To show the lasting impact of these outside influences, the effects from the card last multiple rounds. The death of a pet would give you gray for three turns, but going to therapy would give you green for three turns.
At the end of the second round, there would be another guided discussion about how the new cards and new rules made people feel, and any changes from the first to the second round.
For the third and final round, there are two additions: players are now allowed to show the others their score, and a helper card is introduced. Both further the idea that it’s easier to get through bad times when you can be supported by those around you. One helper card, called “Together,” emphasizes that it’s okay to reach out to someone else to ask for help when we feel down; in order to be there for the next person who draws a card, you add or subtract the same number of points that they do. It’s not always a net-positive experience, but it’s important to build connections and learn to ask for help. A different helper card, “Reach Out,” shows how reaching out to a friend can help; it directs you to choose another player and show each other your point totals, after which both players get 10 points.
After the final round, there would be another guided discussion about how people felt throughout all rounds, and how the cards and gameplay structure impacted them. At the end of the game, there would ideally be handouts for identifying depression in yourself and in your friends, how to help those with depression, and what to do if things get really bad.
Our physical prototype had two parts: the cards, and the chips. We used the lasercutter to cut out card backs out of bristol board, and taped the printed card faces to the backs. The chips we lasercut out of bristol board, and painted green or gray. We made little bags for the chips out of masking tape and a cut-up black t-shirt. Not anything fancy, but they got the job done.
Our physical prototype had two parts: the cards, and the chips. We used the lasercutter to cut out card backs out of bristol board, and taped the printed card faces to the backs. The chips we lasercut out of bristol board, and painted green or gray. We made little bags for the chips out of masking tape and a cut-up black t-shirt. Not anything fancy, but they got the job done.
After it was all done, I had a few things I would have done differently. I would add a lasercut paper shield for protecting the score, because physical separation between you and the group is the goal. I would put more testing and research into the scripts for before, during, and after rounds, especially with more scientifically accurate information.
After we presented our game and demonstrated a round or two, my group received really positive feedback about the concept and the execution. There was talk of potential to expand the concept into other areas, even past mental illness. Any type of discrimination would benefit from empathy-building exercises: racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, just to name a few.
As I wrote in my final paper, “Empathy is the path to understanding our fellow humans, and creating a more caring, positive world for everyone. If we can foster empathy in easy-to-use, facilitated gameplay, I would hope it could seriously help a new generation of people."
As I returned to working on the Depression Game, I started by rethinking the design system for the cards. First, I created three separate card types. I renamed the external factor cards “Effect cards,” so now all three were Situation, Effect, and Helper cards.
Second, I redesign the look of the cards. I wanted the look of each card to communicate its purpose before someone even reads the words. I keep the green and gray color scheme, and highlighted each color option when they appeared. Check out the before/afters below, for each type of card.
Once I overhauled the overall design system, I looked at the system as a whole. I tested out different color combinations, including a pink/blue/purple scheme that I decidedly did not pursue. I eventually settled on a scheme of light gray background, with green and gray accents. (Of course, as I look at these, I would go with a lighter accent gray in the last set.)
I had some ideas for branding for the Depression Game, but nothing really came together until recently, when I needed a cover image for building this page on my website. I noodled around in Illustrator with some circles and gradients, and eventually came up with what's in use now.
The goal was to visually communicate how depression isn't part of the normal ups and downs of life; depression turns all your colors gray and lifeless. I wanted to show how disrupting a huge swatch of gray can be to the normally colorful range of human emotion.
I started with circles, then messed around with repeating circles until I got something interesting. After I cut off the unnecessary parts, I was left with a cool pattern of shapes.
I pulled some colors into a color palette, and made some gradients. I began messing around with pairing shapes together and filling them in gradient.
Eventually I settled on combining gradients from opposite directions, in four color variants. I liked how the blue gradient contrasted with the yellow and orange, and orange and red gradients. It felt colorful enough that any gray blob would be disruptive.
This branding isn't final; I threw this together in an hour, in order to get a cover image for this page. I think it's effective, and it communicates effectively my goal. I think it could use some research, because I'm going off of what I think. I'd like to test more patterns and color combos.
This project is still in progress, and there is a lot left to do. The next steps are centered on testing; any improvements to the cards' copy, and to the structure of the game, have to come from actual experience running the whole game. I can make as many card drafts as I want, but until I'm actually printing and using them, the designs are unproven. Of course, testing groups like dorm floors, sports teams, and youth groups isn't feasible right now, and may not be feasible for another year. In the meantime, I am working on a graphic to visually summarize the gameplay, as well as the scripts for guided discussions before, during, and after each round.
If you think this project could help you or someone you know, please reach out. I'd love to connect and maybe plan some testing situations. And remember: even if you have gray days, the sun will come out eventually. In the meantime, reach out to your loved ones, and be kind to yourself.
