Qualitative Study into Adapting Persuasive Games for Mental Wellbeing to Personality, Stressors and Attitudes

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.