S2 AR & VR Week 12

Gamification of a mental health app?

Research into the concept of a mental health app that involves gamification, 'The eQuoo app uses adventure games designed by psychologists to help you increase your emotional fitness and teach you new psychological skills.

You'll also find tips on how to communicate more effectively and maintain your mental wellbeing.' the app is advertised on the NHS website: https://www.nhs.uk/apps-library/equoo-emotional-fitness-game/

If my app was seen as a game would it degrade its intention? game play keeps people using the app, so perhaps those elements need to be structured in to the app time... keeping people on the app and talking about their needs will enable greater satisfaction for the user.

Digital art and monetisation of the virtual format

Questions about the value of digital art and its monetisation, its value and the place of this format in the art world is being debated now. An article by CR James Britton 01.04.21:

https://www.creativereview.co.uk/nft-gold-rush-james-britton/?cmpid=crnews_19717909&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=cr_news

'When an artwork is minted or ‘tokenised’, an entry is recorded on a Blockchain as a permanent record, which helps solve this problem. An NFT provides a way to validate provenance more efficiently than any offline process has before (although not always without wrinkles in the process).'

https://www.seditionart.com is a NFT platform representing artists such as Tracey Emin.

Data protection and brand blurring

Personalisation of a user experience and integrating brand engagement relies on personal data. The use of personal data could come at costs to privacy: for example activity levels from your fitness tracker; psychiatric disorders from your mental health app.

My app development must provide a safe space, a trusted brand in order to allow full usage. The contract which people accept when downloading an app (but never read) needs to make sure that the personal data is not going to impact peoples future life choices: insurance, medical cover etc... What we are in our 20's is not who we are in our 40's. General Data Protection Regulation was passed in 2018 to try and start to cover such issues. In the UK GDPR sets out seven key principles:

• Lawfulness, fairness and transparency.

• Purpose limitation.

• Data minimisation.

• Accuracy.

• Storage limitation.

• Integrity and confidentiality (security)

• Accountability.

As a UX designer we need to think about legal rights and data protection, from the way the data is accessed, to how it is stored and shared back to the customer, this needs to be relevant and coherent.