Conference Paper · Peer-Reviewed
Designing a Practice-Based Mobile Prototype for Mental Health Literacy through Emotional Granularity and Reflective Play
How can mobile game design foster mental health literacy through emotional granularity — by translating brief reflective techniques into tactile, symbolic mechanics?
Abstract
Mental health literacy, the ability to recognise, understand, and respond to mental health related concepts, is important for early intervention and wellbeing [9]. Awareness remains uneven, and stigma continues to limit help seeking [4]. This paper presents Library of Emotions, a practice-based mobile prototype that explores how mental health literacy may be supported through emotional granularity and reflective play. The project embeds literacy into its mechanics, supporting awareness and more precise emotional naming. It supports early recognition rather than treatment.
Emotional granularity, understood as the ability to recognise and label emotions with precision, is associated with resilience and adaptive coping [20]. The project asks how mobile game design can foster mental health literacy through emotional granularity and by translating mental health techniques into tactile, symbolic mechanics. Building on reflective play research [14], the project explores how symbolic and tactile mechanics might help players engage with and reconsider emotional experience through gentle interaction.
A practice-based methodology guides iterative prototyping, translating brief reflective techniques into tactile mobile interactions. The prototype prompts precise emotion choices, connects them to symbolic mini-games, and returns them to short reflection. In doing so, it offers a design approach for interactive experiences that support awareness, precision in naming, and safe reflection.
Abstract reproduced from the version of record (ACM, CC-BY 4.0). Paragraph breaks added for readability on this page.
Research at a Glance
Question → contribution → evidence, in brief
Research question
How can mobile game design foster mental health literacy through emotional granularity, and by translating mental health techniques into tactile, symbolic mechanics?
Problem
Mental health literacy matters for early intervention and wellbeing, but awareness remains uneven and stigma continues to limit help seeking. Interactive work in this space often delivers literacy as instruction layered on top of a game rather than as something the mechanics themselves carry.
Approach
A practice-based methodology guiding iterative prototyping: brief reflective techniques are translated into tactile mobile interactions. The prototype prompts precise emotion choices, connects them to symbolic mini-games, and returns the player to short reflection.
Contribution
A design approach for interactive experiences that support awareness, precision in naming, and safe reflection — with literacy embedded in the mechanics rather than instructed, demonstrated through the Library of Emotions prototype.
Findings / Outcomes
The Library of Emotions mobile prototype, presented as a worked design case: a loop that moves from precise emotion selection, through symbolic and tactile mini-games, back to brief reflection.
Limitations
The paper supports early recognition rather than treatment, and makes no clinical claim. It is a short practice-based paper presenting a prototype and a design approach — not a controlled evaluation of effects on literacy, symptoms or help-seeking behaviour.
Questions this research can help answer
- How can mobile game design support mental health literacy?
- How can emotional granularity be supported through interaction rather than instruction?
- How can brief reflective techniques be translated into tactile, symbolic game mechanics?
- What does it mean to embed literacy into a game’s mechanics rather than layer it on top?
- How can an interactive experience support safe reflection without functioning as treatment?
These are the questions the paper is positioned to inform. It contributes a design approach and a prototype, not empirical evidence of effect.
Limitations
What this research does not establish:
- The work supports early recognition and reflection rather than treatment, and is not a clinical or diagnostic instrument.
- The paper presents a prototype and a design approach; it does not report a controlled evaluation of outcomes.
- No claims are made about changes in symptoms, help-seeking behaviour, stigma or measured literacy.
- Findings should be read as practice-based design knowledge, situated in the prototype described.
How to Cite
APA
Olarte Ávila, T. C. (2026). Designing a practice-based mobile prototype for mental health literacy through emotional granularity and reflective play. In Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG ’26) (pp. 1–4). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3815598.3815672
BibTeX
@inproceedings{olarteavila2026granularity,
author = {Olarte {\'A}vila, Tania Catherine},
title = {Designing a Practice-Based Mobile Prototype for Mental Health Literacy through Emotional Granularity and Reflective Play},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG '26)},
year = {2026},
pages = {1--4},
publisher = {ACM},
address = {Copenhagen, Denmark},
doi = {10.1145/3815598.3815672},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3815598.3815672}
}Open access under CC BY 4.0 — the version of record is freely readable at the DOI above.
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