This project is a redesign of the League of Legends post-game screen based on gaming and mental health interviews.

Interview Process and Findings

My team and I conducted interviews with participants who expressed an interest in video games in order to find a link between video games and mental health.

We had a total of 8 participants, 5 male and 5 female, with varying play time and frequency. Our sample was not selected based on common games, but the most common game played was League of Legends. Four of the participants played it both competitively and casually, and all four reported increased stress. As competitive play is known for its higher stakes, several participants mentioned that maintaining your individual rank can become stressful.

Identifying Users

Based on the interview results, we were able to identify 3 user archetypes for our personas.

  1. Mandy: Casual social player, plays normal queue frequently, but only plays ranked modes with friends; prefers slower pace but enjoys having the support of friends in the faster paced game. Primarily plays for escapism and stress relief, but admits back to back queues are stressful

  2. Clark: Highly motivated player; plays normal and ranked modes interchangeably, both with friends and solo queue; prefers faster paced games in order to test and improve skill

  3. Allan: Extremely casual player; only plays socially, both in normal and ranked. Used to be a frequent player but stopped due to the stress from back to back ranked games.

Goals

Our goal for the redesign was to promote emotional regulation on the platform. We initially looked into mental health breaks or checkpoints, but a "forced break" would not be well perceived due to similarities with existing penalties like queue dodging.

Solution

We created an overlay addition to the existing post-game screen that served as a mental health checkpoint. This screen would trigger after several back-to-back competitive matches and display between the Honor screen and the post-game statistics screen.