mgysel / shs

A digital board game prototype developed to assist research studying the impact of role-play dialogue and mindfulness practices on a participant’s openness to experience, openness to change, and pro-sociality.

SHS Semester Project

This project is a digital board game prototype developed to assist research studying the impact of role-play dialogue and mindfulness practices on a participant’s openness to experience, openness to change, and pro-sociality.

Prototype Overview

The prototype developed is a cooperative, digital board game based on Ephiscience’s Wisdom Expedition game [1]. In this digital board game, four participants play four rounds. In each round, the participants are given a question and a series of criteria cards that suggest ways the question can be answered (give an example, define, argue, etc.). Two of the participants answer the question through dialogue, attempting to validate as many criteria cards as they can. The other two participants listen to the dialogue and validate when a criteria card has been applied, thereby scoring the speakers.

After the second round, each participant chooses a character with a backstory, using it to answer questions in the final two rounds. Whereas participants answer questions in their own voice in the first two rounds, participants role-play their character in the last two rounds, answering questions in their chosen character’s voice.

Between rounds, participants reflect on the previous round’s discussion. In the control group, participants silently reflect on the previous round’s discussion. In the experimental group, participants conduct a short mindfulness practice.

Instructions to Run Project

The prototype was developed using ReactJS, and can be found in the frontend directory. To run the prototype locally, clone the repository, navigate into the frontend directory, then set up and run the application as follows:

$ npm install
$ npm start