Care Through Play, Anywhere: Designing Solutions For Digital Play Therapy

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, many services and businesses have been transitioned online to avoid travel and exposure. A number of these timely adaptations started as a compromise, but are now expected to continue even after the pandemic is over. Telehealth and teletherapy were among the most prominent examples—as doctors, therapists, and counselors moved to deliver their services remotely. In the last week of March 2020, telehealth encounters in the United States increased by 154% compared to 2019 (Koonin et al., 2020, p. 1598). As counseling sessions were made available from home, many saw the benefits of teletherapy, including increased accessibility, timeliness, convenience, continuity of care, and patients’ comfort of being in their own space. However, unlike conversation therapies, play therapies for children rely on the act of physical play and equipment such as toys and a sand tray. As a result, play therapists have been challenged in adapting to the current model of video-based teletherapy. Based on information gathered from the primary research with counselors and play therapists, most challenges are related to the reduced therapeutic quality due to the lack of support from technology, despite the amount of interest to include more digital tools in their practice. To explore ways to solve these challenges, the researcher analyzed the data from interview sessions with the therapists and generated a list of design principles. Following these established principles, an iterative approach was initiated and included brainstorming, system mapping, wireframing, and a series of digital prototypes. Multiple possibilities of digital play therapy were explored with active participation and feedback from the professionals.