Cultivate Self-Care Rituals Among Young Adults Through Gamified Intervention

Abstract

Young adults encounter various challenges such as academic, financial, and social pressures, which profoundly impact their well-being, often resulting in stress and anxiety. The practice of self-care rituals presents an opportunity to help them navigate challenges and achieve sustained well-being. This graduation project aims to cultivate self-care rituals among young adults through gamified intervention to promote well-being via a meaningful and engaging experience.
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Using qualitative methods, research began with a literature analysis to understand what self-care rituals are. Based on the theoretical foundation, user research continued to investigate the benefits of self-care rituals, along with the mechanisms of meaning-making that enable these benefits, and their natural processes of creation and sustenance. The findings highlighted the necessity of design intervention to support the creation of self-care rituals and also to facilitate their maintenance and refinement, informing a series of design directions and strategies. An initial flow for the intervention was then established. Further research explored the integration of gamification to enhance engagement in cultivating self-care rituals. Gamification strategies and an interaction vision were developed to shape the overall gamified experience.

Through three rounds of prototyping and iteration, a final design intervention was developed, based on findings from the research and design explorations. It includes a “Ritual Weaver” toolkit and an interactive guidance system, empowering users to create and sustain self-care rituals that align with their needs and values through a gamified, magical, and collaborative experience. The intervention was evaluated for both its functionality and user experience, focusing on meeting the design goals of being self-explanatory, meaningful and engaging. Evaluation results demonstrated the intervention’s effectiveness in cultivating self-care rituals to promote well-being and informed recommendations for further improvement.

The final conclusion summarizes the project's findings, contributions, limitations, and future opportunities.