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University students often experience stress, constant pressure and emotional difficulties and many of them don't know how to manage difficult situations like panic or anxiety attacks or where to begin in terms of taking care of their mental health and wellbeing in campus. Available mental wellness resources can be complicated, boring, or unrelated to students' daily routines, making it difficult to develop consistent self-care habits. Lack easy access to reliable information and immediate respond to how to react in difficult situations is something that has to change to be able to increase self-care and community care.
Our proposed solution is a mobile application that helps university students incorporate mental wellness practices into their daily routines through short, intuitive, and personalized activities, while also providing guidance on obtaining professional support when needed and displaying important information about self-care. Also an app that will increase community awareness and will promote wellbeing, mental health care, support networks and community support.
| No. | Problem | Alternative | Solution |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Some students stop doing activities that help them feel better when they have many assignments, exams, or deadlines. | They try to organize their time better, listen to music, meditate, exercise when they can, or simply stop these activities to focus on their studies. | The app offers short well-being activities, such as breathing exercises, personalized activities, and reminders, so students can do them when they have time. |
| 2 | When some students feel very stressed or overwhelmed, they do not always know what to do or who to ask for help. | They try to deal with it on their own, talk to friends, or look for guidance using digital tools. | The app offers reliable well-being information, access to university support resources, and an option to contact a trusted person when needed. |
| 3 | A student has an anxiety attack due to the load of work in university | The student stops working on what they are doing and go for a walk for a few minutes. | The app shows the student some recommendations such as stop working on what they are doing and make guided breathing exercises, wash their hands with cold water and distract their mind with soft sounds or music to release stress. |
| 4 | A student does not know how to help a friend that's having a panic attack. | They try to find information about how to help on the internet or go to find help from usually someone older like a teacher or and psychologist. | The app shows the recommended steps to follow when reacting to this situations. Also has relevant information and strategies based on the psychological first aid protocol so that the user has immediately access to reliable and certificated information to correctly respond to the situation. |
| 5 | Students do not know how to control their breathing under stress situations. | They try without success to calm down and slow their breathing. | The app has a feature completely dedicated to guided breathing exercises that follow the strategies recommended by doctors and psychologist, this way the user does not make an extra effort to find a strategy for this situation on their own and reduces the probability of getting worse or fainting. |
| 6 | Students tend to forget to regularly practice self-care habits. | They practice the habit that they remember sometimes or they pospone the activity that usually ends up undone. | The app has a functionality that provides the user notifications about daily habits that constantly reminds them to implement self-care and gives strategies to successfully combine their student’s schedule with these activities. |
| 7 | Some students feel guilty for resting or taking pauses because they believe they should be studying instead; therefore, they keep working through exhaustion. | They keep working despite feeling tired, try taking short breaks but end up cutting them off early, or feel bad when they actually rest. | The app presents well-being activities as short actions (of a few minutes) with a defined purpose so students can perceive rest as a valid use of their time instead of a waste. |
| 8 | Some students who are far from their family feel they don't have anyone to talk to when feeling overwhelmed. | They call or message family and friends back home despite the time difference, or they isolate themselves when these people aren't available. | The app offers quick access to well-being resources and the option of contacting a trusted person, providing students with somewhere to turn even when their usual network isn't available. |
| 9 | The students tend to forget to reach a streak of well being activities. | Having an analog agenda where it can mark every time they make a wellness activity. | The app register every time the user makes an activity in order to have a record of the activities, also this tracking motivates students to be consistent and improve habits. |
| 10 | The students don't know which physical activities should do regarding to their wellbeing. | They can look for trainers that can make a personal set of physical activities. | The app have a set of activities and suggestions that settle to the user own routines, time available and preferences. |
| 11 | A student who is starting to experience a panic attack is not able to call someone for help because he can not interact with their phone normally and execute the same amount of steps as if he wasn’t in this situation. | The student usually tries to handle the situation on their own because asking anyone else near them does not give them trust. | The app has the functionality to set a panic button that gives easy access to call a close person in their support network when this situations happen. Also, one of the app's purpose is to generate awareness in the community, increasing the knowledge about how to respond to this situation, empathy and willingness to help others, this way it will be safer and more reliable to ask for help from anyone nearby. |
| 12 | Students frequently don’t know how to prevent panic or anxiety attacks when they know the are under a lot of pressure. | They end up dealing with a complicated situation that affects directly their well-being at campus. | The app has different features that include reliable information about self-care and strategies to prevent this situation, how to identify and act before it starts and how to correctly respond to one in case the situation has already progressed. |
1. What screen has the highest crash rate in the app's navigation flow?
This question is classified in this type because it is related to crashes and telemetry of the app.
1. How can I respond correctly to attend a psychological emergency?
This question is classified in this type because it is answered through what the app will show and have in it for the user to interact with.
2. Where can I found advices or recommended habits to care for my mental health?
This question is classified in this type because it is answered through what the app will show and have in it for the user to interact with.
3. How can I quickly contact someone for help when I'm struggling?
This question is classified in this type because it is answered through what the app will show and have in it for the user to interact with.
4. Can I release my stress through calm or fun activities?
This question is classified in this type because it is answered through what the app will show and have in it for the user to interact with.
1. How frequently is the guided breathing feature used?
This question is classified in this type because it involves the frequency of usage of a feature in the app, so that the developer team can improve the feature for the users interacting with it.
2. Does the user truly completes the daily check every single day?
This question is classified in this type because it refers to verifying whether the feature of the daily check is fulfilling its purpose.
3. How long does the user listen to an audio clip during each session?
This question is classified in this type because it analyzes the frequency of usage of the audios on the app, so that the developer team can understand and search for more, different or longer audios to display for the users interacting with them.
1. During which weeks of the semester is usage most frequent, grouped by the student's major?
This question was classified in this type because the information collected interests educational institutions and is useful for them when focusing their efforts on mental health care based on usage data.
1. What are the features/functionalities that help the user the most?
This question is classified in this type because it includes type 2 relating the questions of the users when it comes to their interaction with the app and type 3 relating to the usage of the features in the app.
