Where's Kauê?- Developing a chat story to promote mental health in schools

On 20 June 2023, Ethox Research Fellow Dr Gabriela Pavarini demonstrated the chat-story “Cadê o Kauê?” at the 22nd ACM Interaction Design & Children Conference (IDC) at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, on behalf of the Engajadamente Team. IDC is the main international conference in the field of inclusive child-centred design, learning and interaction.

About the chat-story

Stories are powerful: they give us new ways of seeing the world, teach us to care, inspire action. “Cade o Kauê?” (“Where's Kauê?”) is a storytelling intervention based on an online chat platform: a game that unfolds via text messages, images and videos.

The chat-story is designed to support Brazilian students to develop skills to promote mental health in schools. In the story, Kauê, the user’s fictional best friend, experiences an intense emotional reaction and hides away from everyone. In their journey to find Kauê, the user discovers their own potential as a social agent, capable of supporting their peers and building a more inclusive school environment.

Accompanying the chat story is a manual for teachers, to help students put their skills in action, inspiring real-life stories of solidarity and social change.The chat-story is currently available in Brazilian Portuguese at www.engajadamente.org and on Instagram. The whole experience takes about 1h30m. Cadê o Kauê? has reached over 6.4k players so far.

Co-design of “Cadê o Kauê?”

Cadê o Kauê? was written by many hands: researchers across the universities of Oxford and Brasilia, a youth collaborative group, and creative experts at the health technology company Talk2U. The story also incorporated input from several stakeholder groups, including young people, teachers and policy experts. The story is based on real life challenges faced by Brazilian adolescents and their priorities for civic engagement.

The project was funded by the British Academy and Oxford Population Health.

To learn more about the codesign process, watch the “Making of” video.

The full IDC paper is available at https://doi.org/10.1145/3585088.3594496 .