Serious Games for Professional Skills the Design of an Escape Room to Explore the Possibilities of eMental Health

A lack of knowledge and skills is an important barrier in the uptake of technology in mental healthcare. To address this issue, we propose a game-based solution in which mental healthcare professionals can explore and experience the possibilities of eMental Health. Based on extensive user needs research, we arrived at an escape room scenario as a promising solution, allowing a combination of motivated ‘hands on’ exploration and social learning. Currently, this escape room is being developed in multiple iterations, using input from different co-design sessions with mental healthcare professionals, designers and researchers. A try-out has taken place, based on which the final version is being developed. Subsequently, a field study will be conducted to investigate the user experiences, efficacy, and applicability of the escape room in the practice of mental healthcare.