Experimenting with Endogenous Design for Digital Therapy Games

Abstract

Digital Therapeutic (DTx) Games promise to engage users in physical and mental health therapy and thereby provide effective treatment over a period. Games for different kinds of therapies are emerging in recent milieu. However, the promise of engagement and effectiveness of these games can be realized only when there is a balance between the joy and purpose of participating in therapies. Designers today lack specific guidance on designing purposeful games that achieve seamless integration between these two. We propose the use of an endogenous design approach to address this problem. In this paper we describe the approach and demonstrate its application through three case studies.