Speaker

Name: Games for Health Europe Conference
Start: 2026-03-30T09:00
End: 2025-03-31T18:00

Speaker Info

Biography: Jitze Orij has a background in Industrial design with a particular emphasis on the design of games for mental health and wellbeing. In 2024 he successfully defended his master thesis: “Shift perspective: an intervention game for anxiety disorders”. Jitze is currently working as a PhD candidate at the Human Technology Interaction group of the University of Technology Eindhoven. In his PhD research he focuses on identity development through representations in video games. Through his work, Jitze combines design research and game studies to explore how games can function as meaningful tools for reflection, creating awareness, and personal development. His research interests include identity development, video game representations, and the role of game design in providing new opportunities in digital mental healthcare.

Title: Designing Games for Mental Health: Practical Insights from My Student Projects

Summary: The current mental health care system is unable to sufficiently address the demand for mental health care, creating a treatment gap. To address this gap, an increased focus has been put on developing game-based digital mental health interventions (gDMHIs) to provide effective engaging and accessible care. However, few gDMHIs are out on the market and they often lack real world impact leading to a call for development of game-based interventions through user-centered approaches and interdisciplinary collaboration. In this talk, I will go over the design process of two of my student projects, Robin and Shift Perspective, where I designed a game for the awareness and intervention of a mental disorder. I will discuss practical insights that I have gained from working with stakeholders, creating meaningful game mechanics and iterating the design with users. Through sharing my insights I hope that it inspires more designers to develop effective games that go beyond the hype and create effective digital interventions that make mental healthcare accessible for those who need it.