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Research

Sean Munson

Winter 2025

Leveraging role-playing games to support mental health

Instructors:

  • Sean Munson
  • Georgia Kenderova
  • Nisha Devasia

Description:
Tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) can be leveraged to help build social and emotional skills and support mental health by fostering empathy, building community, and providing a safe space for experimentation and identity play. 

In this DRG, we will read and become acquainted with literature on game-based learning, such as games for learning social and emotional skills (with a focus on developing mental health skills), game narrative design, narrative immersion, learning and behavioral change theories, and other related topics. Ideally, we will also look at multiple existing RPG systems, RPG mechanics, campaigns/storylines, and play and analyze a few of those games to aid our understanding of how they function and inform the design of a future study. 

Outcomes: 

  • Reading and discussing academic literature; learning about how games can support building social and emotional skills and mental health.
  • Contribute to the design of a research study (e.g., scoping research questions, research sketches, etc.).
  • Understand how immersive narratives and game mechanics work and opportunity to create ones ourselves.

Enrollment information

  • Meeting time: Meeting time will be determined based on student availability.
    • Some options:
    • Tuesday: 2:30-4:30 pm
    • Tuesday: 4-6 pm
    • Wednesday: 3-5 pm
    • Thursday: 3-5 pm
    • Thursday: 3:30-5:30 pm
  • Credits: 2-3 credits (2-hour group meetings and about 4-5 hours of additional work/week)
  • Who should apply:
    • 3-5 students (undergraduate or graduate)
    • Interest in game research, specifically game-based learning, and/or designin interventions to support mental health; experience with playing TTRPGs or other narrative-based games not required but appreciated!
    • Completed basic coursework in HCDE or other related field (e.g., iSchool).
    • Experience with conducting literature reviews and a basic understanding of research methods.
    • This DRG counts toward the directed research requirement for PhD students.
  • To apply: Please complete this Google Form by December 2.
  • Anticipated notification date: December 8, 2024
  • Questions? Contact Georgia at gak98@uw.edu

Autumn 2024

Designing Healthy Eating Futures for Latinx Adolescents

Instructors:

  • Carla Castillo, PhD Student, HCDE
  • Sean Munson, Professor, HCDE

This DRG will help conduct a research study to understand the current behavior of Latinx families—parents and adolescents—and their goals/needs around eating, and to develop intervention concepts where design might support desired eating behaviors. The study consists of a food diary, interviews, co-design workshops, and a survey to gather feedback on intervention concepts.

This research will be conducted with the Latinx population in the Lower Yakima Valley. Students are not expected to travel to the site but will assist in planning and conducting study activities by:

  1. Conducting a literature review
  2. Reviewing food diary data
  3. Conducting remote interviews with participants
  4. Analyzing collected data
  5. Refining co-design workshops activities
  6. Developing storyboards of the most promising intervention concepts

Not all students are expected to support each task; tasks may be assigned to certain students based on their preferences and abilities.

Enrollment information

  • Meeting time: To be determined based on student availability
    • Currently we are looking at:
    • Tuesdays, 1-3 p.m.
    • Wednesdays, 2-4 p.m.
    • Thursdays, 10-12 p.m.
    • Thursdays, 2-4 p.m.
  • Credits: 2-3 credits (e.g., 6-9 hours total of meeting and outside work)
  • Who should apply: We will prioritize students enrolled in HCDE degree programs, but students outside of HCDE are also welcome to apply.
    • Interest in this topic, human-centered design, public health, nutrition, or related fields
    • Highly desirable (You do not need to meet all of these, but experience in at least one area is preferred):
      • Experience with conducting interviews
      • Experience with analyzing qualitative data
      • Experience with developing storyboards
    • Proficiency in Spanish is helpful but not required
    • This DRG counts toward the directed research requirement for PhD students.
  • To apply: Please complete this Google Form.
  • Anticipated notification date: Rolling deadline, aiming to notify everyone by September 27.
  • Questions? Contact Carla at carla23@uw.edu.

Autumn 2024

Designing Measurement Reading Group

Instructors: Nichole Sams, Sean Munson and Brittany Blanchard

This DRG will explore designing equitable and usable social science measurements. We will read articles weekly, documenting heuristics of measurement design, critiques of inequitable foundational practices, and create a Zine/presentation to share understanding elements of measurement, how to evaluate measurements for research design goals, procedure for designing measurement. The group can use information to decide the final audience for zine/presentation.

The materials we will be primarily using will be largely sourced from mental health outcomes and health implementation science measures.

Boateng, G. O., Neilands, T. B., Frongillo, E. A., Melgar-Quiñonez, H. R., & Young, S. L. (2018). Best practices for developing and validating scales for health, social, and behavioral research: a primer. Frontiers in public health, 6, 149.

Smith, G. T., McCarthy, D. M., & Anderson, K. G. (2000). On the sins of short-form development. Psychological assessment, 12(1), 102.

Enrollment information

  • Meeting time: Meeting time will be determined by student availability.
    • Currently we are looking at:
      • Tuesdays, 1-2:30 p.m.
      • Wednesdays, 2:30-4 p.m.
      • Thursdays, 2:30-4 p.m.
        ​​​​
  • Credits: 1
  • Who should apply: Applicants should be passionate about literature review and measurement design, can be from any major or background.
    • This DRG counts toward the directed research requirement for PhD students.
  • To apply: Please complete this Google Form.
  • Application deadline: Rolling application deadline is Sept. 20 (this is a late posting so we will take late applicants)
  • Anticipated notification date: Rolling, final Sept. 22
  • Questions? Contact Nichole at nsams@uw.edu.

Autumn 2024

UW ALACRITY Center Website Redesign

Instructors:

  • Tricia Aung (PhD student)
  • Sean Munson (Professor)

Note this DRG is no longer accepting applications for autumn.

The UW Advanced Laboratories for Accelerating the Reach and Impact of Treatments for Youth and Adults with Mental Illness Center (UWAC) is a multidisciplinary team of experts from mental health, implementation science (IS), and human-centered design (HCD) focused on overcoming obstacles that prevent quality mental health interventions from reaching historically marginalized groups. Funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, UWAC supports projects with improving the usability, engagement, and appropriateness of evidence-based clinical interventions and implementation strategies in diverse and non-specialty settings (e.g., rural, urban, low-income, primary care, schools). UWAC is in its second round of funding (2023-2028), and the project has generated numerous resources and findings, which has positioned UWAC as a leader in leveraging IS and HCD approaches. There is a critical need to improve the UWAC website’s information architecture and usability for users and UWAC team. 

The goal of this DRG is to redesign the UWAC website to better meet diverse user and dissemination needs. The website currently features UWAC-developed resources and presentations, highlights project accomplishments, and announces requests for proposals. We would like to improve the website to better meet user needs and highlight UWAC’s growing work.

Proposed steps:

  1. Develop an understanding of existing content on the existing UWAC website. Create an inventory of all content/sitemap on the existing website.
  2. Conduct heuristic usability evaluation of existing website.
  3. Focus group discussions, interviews, and/or survey to discuss information needs. We would like to gather information from UWAC team members (e.g., Admin Core, Methods Core), project investigators (e.g., current and potential small pilot project applicants, research assistants), advisory board, and external investigators that have requested resources from UWAC. 
  4. Collate from UWAC team members existing content (e.g., papers, guides, presentations) for the website.
  5. Lead card sorting session with UWAC team members to categorize content and develop a content hierarchy.
  6. Create new site map and user flows.
  7. Develop clickable wireframe prototypes.
  8. Conduct usability testing with users on prototypes.
  9. Make initial changes in Wordpress based on prototypes.

Enrollment information

  • Meeting time: To be determined based on student availability
  • Credits: 2-3 credits (e.g., 6-9 hours total of meeting and outside work) 
  • Who should apply: 
    • 3 students (undergraduate or graduate)
    • Experience with Wordpress
    • Interest in translational research, implementation science, and mental health 
    • Relevant coursework (e.g. HCDE 318 Introduction to User-Centered Design, HCDE 417 Usability Research, HCDE 536 Interaction Design and Prototyping) helpful but not required
    • This DRG does not count toward the directed research requirement for PhD students but may be a free elective for PhD students.
  • To apply: This DRG is no longer accepting applicants. We will notify selected students by September 20, 2024.
  • Questions? Contact Tricia at taung@uw.edu.

Dr. Munson's Research Group archive