Keep telling
Interactive stories to speed up recovery
How can gamification be integrated into the healthcare system? Is there a way to use its positive aspects to boost the motivation of hospital patients and speed up their recovery? Keep telling is an app concept that explores these possibilities. By using elements from interactive novels and gamebooks, it aims to encourage convalescents to keep being physically and mentally active.
The idea
Through interactive stories which development the user can proactively influence, Keep Telling aims to help patients with mid and long-term hospitalization stay mentally and physically healthy.
With a mix of in-app actions and real-world actions, the app combines mental and physical work that:
keeps the patient entertained and thus distracted from the reality of the hospital staying,
helps grow his motivation as he is the only one that can make the story advance with his actions,
and gives a sense of fulfillment when the chosen actions take him to finish the story.
The app also offers the possibility to connect with other users, promoting the creation of a support network for convalescent people.
Player journey
The player or user journey of the app concept consists of five phases. Four of them succeed in a linear way (discovery to mastery) and the last one (replay) allows the user to start over diving again into the immersion phase.
1. Discovery: how do the potential players hear about the app?
Since Keep Telling is conceived for health care, hospital staff would need to be onboarded first to be able to recommend the app to suitable patients. After an onboarding session, the hospital team would be handled promotional material such as posters and brochures to inform and motivate convalescents to try the app.
2. Onboarding: how do the players get familiar with the app′s mechanic and functionalities?
Keep telling would have a brief walkthrough that introduces the basic functions through a demo short story. Once finished, full-length stories will be unlocked. For more guidance, the user can always activate additional hints.
3. Immersion: how does the regular use of the app look like?
The user can navigate through different literary genres, choose a story, a difficulty level and decide whether to play alone or with other users. All stories have a multimedia character and like gamebooks, the evolution of the stories depends on the player′s choices.
Some examples of interactions and gamification elements of Keep Telling are:
Choosing the answer or reaction of a character, influencing how the story evolves.
Unlocking new chapters after having walked a given amount of steps.
Unlocking new stories by using the app multiple days in a row.
Obtaining badges and extra points by photographing objects related to the story.
Taking part in collective stories with other users gives double points for every successful action.
4. Mastery: how does the game end?
Like in a printed novel, the game ends when the last chapter of the story has been finished.
Every time the player finishes a story new ones will be unlocked regardless of the achieved points. New stories get gradually longer o more difficult allowing the player to constantly challenge himself.
5. Replay: how does the app encourage users to keep playing after the endgame?
Endgame is achieved once all books or stories have been finished. The user can choose to replay them in another mode (as a group story, with a higher difficulty level or with a time limit), perfect its results (achieving more points and unlocking more badges), or interacting with the story in a different way to get to know all its alternative endings.
Irene Serrano Robredo.
2018
