Role for advantage: using design thinking and usability testing to introduce mental health professionals to role-playing games

Abstract

This creative project has examined and analyzed the problem space of using therapeutically applied tabletop role-playing games and the lack of resources available. While scholarly literature review and ekmpathy sessions found there is interest from mental health professionals of different disciplines, there are few resources available that allow for self-paced, multimedia resources targeted specifically to these stakeholders. The existing gaps in resources were then directly addressed by developing a proof-of-concept prototype, showing how a digital toolkit of this kind might look and function. Finally, user testing took place with stakeholders to test the usability and accessibility of this toolkit. Further development of this digital toolkit would include creating more content with mental health professionals and beta testing with completed content.