Emotionlink

Role : Creative Director / Producer

Status: Prototype

About

Emotionlink is a therapeutic game designed to help make cognitive behavioral therapy more engaging and accessible for teenage patients. Players will first input a summary of their day, and the natural language text parser will identify key words and phrases that indicate the player is feeling a negative emotion. They will then navigate a dialogue with a manifestation of the negative emotion that's affecting them most and must calm it on their own terms with rational thoughts. These conversations will be recorded for their therapist's reference to improve treatment. This prototype was created with consultation from experts Dr. Janiece Pompa and Dr. Uma Dorn

Created in Unity

My Contribution

For this project, I worked in the position of creative director, producer, writer and designer. I came up with the overall idea based on my own experiences working with teenagers hospitalized with mental illness, and followed through on its viability by meeting with two experts. I researched cognitive behavioral therapy, then designed and wrote the dialogue tree in Twine based on the treatment’s goals. I came up with the list of positive activities based on the player’s desired activity level. I organized a backlog and Kanban for the project and made sure that everything was progressing at the rate we needed to succeed. I made sure team members felt supported and kept in communication with each other. I created our pitch and pitched the game to peers and faculty.

Project Timeline

1 sprint (16 days)