Michael Saiger

Michael is a PhD student in the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Intelligent Games and Game Intelligence (IGGI) in the Department of Computer Science.

Our 60 seconds interview with Michael:

What do you do in the field of mental health?

My work involves exploring how we can design mental health games with young people in order to understand therapeutic benefits and young people's awareness of mental health.

What do you find most rewarding and inspiring in this work?

Investigating this area is challenging but the reward of involving young people in the design of games is fascinating.

What is the most challenging or complicated aspect of this work?

The area of designing mental health games with young people is vague and uncertain which means there are no methods of 'best practice' or 'common approaches'. 

What impact do you hope your work is having- or can potentially have?

I hope my work can, A) help designers develop games (video or physical) that can address or explore concepts of mental health in young audiences, B) provide guidelines on how young people engage with and explore mental health concepts through game design, and C) develop tools to help measure engagement of participants involved in user studies.

Could you share with us one piece of advice that you follow for your own mental health?

Finding balance is the best advice I can give. You can't get time back so do what you can and try not to stress about catching up.

Read more about Michael