Help a Friend — MVP
From gamers to gamers
Client: Save the Children is the world’s first and leading independent children’s organisation. They work with children, their communities, and partners worldwide, discovering new solutions to help ensure that the world's most vulnerable children survive, learn and are protected. Every year, reaching tens of millions of children in more than 110 countries through life-changing work.
Project: Help a friend is a beta version chat service designed with the aim to support young gamers. Taking the form of a chatbot, Zoe is able to ask a series of questions in order to provide custom written advice, videos and external links with information on how to handle difficult thoughts and emotions.
It is an MVP that is deployed online, 100% anonymous and fully accessible.
Approach
Insights
Interviews with young gamers and experts in ‘mental health in gaming’ in order to learn from their gaming and mental health experience.
Design
Workshops to ideate on offerings and define the chat service and character. Co-design the chat dialogue and offerings with StC’s psychology team
Testing
Testing with 8 target group members (13-18 year old), 4 students and 3 gaming experts to better understand their needs and experience.
Iterations
Incorporating user testing takeaways into the service design and defining key metrics to measure both service performance and user insights.
Background
Why do we need this tool?
An increasing number of children experience mental health issues. Many of these kids don't seek help or have nobody to turn to. The help must come to them, where they are. Most kids now spend many hours on gaming platforms every week, some every day. The potential of identifying and reaching these kids on various gaming platforms and/or arenas is significant.
An increasing number of children experience mental health issues. Many of these kids don't seek help or have nobody to turn to. The help must come to them, where they are. Most kids now spend many hours on gaming platforms every week, some every day. The potential of identifying and reaching these kids on various gaming platforms and/or arenas is significant.
"(...) they need to feel like they are being listened to and respected (...) We need to be professional friends".
Results
The chatbot service was soft launched on 23rd December 2022 and promoted in the Inferno Online arenas in Sweden (3 in Stockholm and 1 in Malmö). It provides extensive information on improving mental health in particular and overall health in general to gaming teenagers. The aim of this soft launch was to learn whether the teenagers actually use this type of service and continuously collect feedback from its users.