Interactive digital narratives for mental resilience: Understanding the player experience of betwixt

Abstract

Interactive storytelling has been successfully established in various artistic disciplines, and as the medium matures, we see a variety of forms and applications. Recently the form has been used for production of applications that offer the users various therapeutic elements. Our work exploring the usage and impact of such works presents a user experience (UX) study of a mobile application called Betwixt, designed to support mental resilience. Over a four-week period, recruited participants took part in usability tests and responded to surveys and interviews to answer questions on topics such as: navigation approach and difference in experience, motivation for using an application like Betwixt, and whether they were affected emotionally while using the application. We analysed our results through inductive coding and the retrieval of user analytics. Our key findings, presented in the form of observations, include: reasons why the application’s narrative and interface affected the participants, how the interface can reflect negatively on an otherwise enjoyable narrative, how the interactive element of the application has been the main attraction for most participants no matter their background, and ways in which the application affected the participants emotionally via its conversational style and significant level of user agency in the narrative.