Beat-it

Improving mental health through game play

Project Overview

Year: 2011
Client: Yulius
Role: Research, Design Thinking, Prototyping, product owner.  

Beat-it began as a graduation project in 2011, aiming to increase emotional wellbeing for youngsters who are being treated at Ortho-psychiatric and Forensic youth psychiatry centers. It was developed into a smart phone application that was used by Yulius, as e-health intervention for youngsters with diagnosed mental health issues, whom experience difficulty in handling emotions and externalizing behavior problems like aggression. The app offers a game through which they can self-regulate when feelings like stress, tension and anger arise. The game has a tempering and calming effect, through a combination of music, movements and pre-recorded helping thoughts; Real-time, in-the-moment support, independent of healthcare professionals.

Action & Impact  
Originally Beat-it derived from a graduation project at the Delft University of Technology. After graduation, Annet Bruil pitched for funding to make implementation possible and helped Yulius with the final design and production. A successful pilot study followed with a Beta-version of the app, which confirmed the benefit of Beat-it for youth to gain more control over their emotions. The pilot study included 14 participants and ran over the course of 2 years, starting in 2012. Through this pilot we learned valuable lessons. Interventions need to feel personal and up-to-date to users: the beta-version of Beat-it only had 10 songs which quickly felt outdated to the music-savvy-participants. The app can make a large impact if the songs on it are personalized, and the algorithm for analyzing songs is continually improved. A high volume of users is needed to cover the costs of development. For this, marketing and sales are required by a dedicated party. And, healthcare professionals need to be enabled by their organization to distribute the app and to help the end-users with the set-up. These valuable lessons help us today when we are working on e-health interventions for our clients.

Contact person: Annet Bruil

Impact in numbers:
#organizations partnered with: 3