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Sprint 1
Problem description:
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.
Proposed solution:
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.
Revenue model:
We want to inprove the wellness of all our users so we propose an app with free access for the users so our proposed revenue model consist on two ways of raising funds. The first one consist on donations by the users how are happy with the application and want to contribute to the mantinance of the app, these donations are voluntary and arent required to have full access to the features of the app. The second way of rising funds is to sell the app to institutions that are interested in the wellness of their members. At first, we are interested on helping university students, so the first institutions we will aproach are universities, but this is not the limit for the app. We can aproach business that are interest on the wellness of their workers. For last, if the app is successfull we would be interested on reaching a deal with the goverment as a way of helping pubic policies.
Value proposal:
Our value proposition is to offer university students, and those supporting them, an accessible, reliable, and user-friendly mobile tool to manage academic stress, develop consistent self-care habits, and respond effectively to moments of anxiety or emotional crisis. Unlike the scattered information found online or wellness apps that can feel generic, clinical, or difficult to integrate into daily life, our solution combines short, personalized activities, guided breathing exercises, practical mental health information, progress tracking, and quick access to trusted contacts and university support resources into a warm, intuitive experience. This enables students to receive helpful guidance when they need it, build healthier routines, and be better prepared to care for themselves and support others.
| 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. | 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 try to practice the habit that they eventually remember or they pospone the activity which 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 they 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 trying to calm themselves wrongly and dealing with a more 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. |
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Persona 2: Users who are vulnerable to struggle with stress and difficult situations related to mental-health
Persona 3: Users who are close to people that may struggle but have no information nor tools to help correctly
Empathy Map 5 – Natalia, Student who is well informed and knows strategies, but hasn´t been able to put it in practice
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.
2. How long does it take to make the call after pressing the option?
This question is classified in this type because it relates to the application's response time.
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.
4. Which information cards have the lowest usefulness ratings?
This question falls into this category because it allows us to identify what type of information is most useful to users based on their own ratings, allowing us to optimize the information provided in the app and determine how it can be enhanced.
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.
2. Which majors experience the most anxiety and stress during the semester?
This question was categorized in this type because the information obtained is of interest to institutions of higher education 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.
2. Who is most likely to answer emergency calls?
This question combines Type 4 because the user is the primary beneficiary of the information, as it allows them to prioritize their emergency contacts based on past activity. In this sense, it is also related to Type 2.
Sofia, a student experiencing this problem, has 10 free minutes between classes and feels her anxiety rising due to an upcoming exam. To quickly calm down without complicated steps, she opens the app using the shortcut on her home screen, without needing to log in since her session is already active. Without navigating menus, she directly taps the 2-minute guided breathing activity. The app shows her a relaxing animation and vibrates gently at the end of each breathing cycle. This helps the person rely on guided breathing without needing an external person.
Daniel, a supportive friend, receives a message from a friend who sounds very distressed and doesn't know what to say. Looking for clear guidance on how to support his friend without making things worse, he opens the app and taps the information cards. The app shows him concrete steps and suggested phrases, and at the end, offers the option to directly share a link to professional support resources with his friend. Furthermore, he accompanies his friend and uses some of the strategies found in the app. This allows Daniel to help his friend in the best and most conscious way.
Camila is a student who struggles with stress and difficult mental-health situations. She starts having a panic attack alone in her room and can barely use her phone normally. She just needs to reach someone from her support network, fast and without complicated steps. She opens the app and sees the panic button right on the home screen. She taps it once, and the app calls her trusted contact immediately, while showing a short breathing prompt on screen while the call connects. This matters because in an emergency, every extra tap adds risk, so the app needs to get her help with just one action.
Germán is a student who knows good self-care strategies but struggles to keep them up. He has done a short breathing exercise every day for the past five days. He wants to see his progress so he stays motivated to keep going. When he opens the app on day six, the home screen shows his current streak with a small celebration animation. He completes today's activity, the streak updates automatically. This matters because students who already know what helps often stop doing it if they can't see their progress, so the app needs to make that progress visible and rewarding.
Lucia, a student who is starting to have a panic attack, wants clear, simple guidance the moment anxiety starts, because she doesn't know where to begin. Camila starts feeling anxious while studying alone in the library and freezes, unsure of what to do next. She opens the app and taps the self-care flashcard feature. The app immediately shows her one short, concrete action to try (like breathing exercises), without asking her to choose from a long list of options. After she completes it, the app offers a second flashcard only if she wants to continue. Because when she is already overwhelmed and starting to go through this situation, too many choices increase stress or anxiety — the app needs to reduce decision-making to a single, guided next step.
Laura, a student exploring the app’s content for the first time, reads an information sheet on how to recognize the early signs of burnout. As she explores each sheet, Laura has the option to “like” or “dislike” it. She selects the option indicating approval, and the app discreetly stores this feedback without interrupting her workflow. Over time, this rating data helps the team identify which cards truly help students and which ones aren’t read or are marked as unhelpful. This is important because gathering feedback without creating friction is essential for improving content relevance, while respecting students’ limited time and attention.
Sara is a student with anxiety who knows that generic advice doesn't always work for her specific triggers. She goes into the app's emergency protocol settings and finds a default step-by-step protocol already in place, based on psychological first aid guidelines. Instead of using it as is, she edits it: she reorders the steps so that listening to a specific calming playlist comes before the breathing exercise. She saves the changes. The next time she opens the emergency protocol flow during a stressful moment, the app follows her customized protocol instead of the default one. This matters because a single generic protocol doesn't work equally well for everyone, so the app needs to let students adapt trusted guidance to what actually helps them, without losing the safety net of a solid default for those who don't customize it.
Juan is a university student who feels overwhelmed after a week with many assignments and exams. He wants to express what he is thinking, but he is not ready to talk to someone else. He opens the app, goes to the private journal, and writes about the situations that are causing him stress. The app saves the entry in his journal so he can read it again later. This gives Juan a private space to express and organize his thoughts without feeling judged.
Daniela is a university student who often forgets to take care of herself when she has many assignments. During a break between classes, she receives a daily reminder from the app to complete a well-being activity. She opens the notification, looks at the available short activities, and chooses one. The app shows her the instructions, and Daniela follows them until she finishes the activity. This helps her include a small self-care activity in her day, even when she does not have much free time.
The Deca, an area that has direct intrest in student's well-being, wants to see aggregated, anonymized tendencies in student engagement and mood to decide where to focus the university's next wellness campaign. A week before finals, the coordinator logs into the analytics dashboard from her laptop. She filters engagement data by department and time period, and sees a spike in mood check-ins reporting stress in the engineering department during exam weeks. She exports the summary to share with the student wellness office. This because program decisions need to be based on real usage patterns, not assumptions, and the coordinator needs an accessible, non-invasive way to view trends without ever seeing individual student data.
Juana is a university student who cares a lot about her friends. During a especially stressfull week, such a test week, realices that some of her friends are not having a great time and are on a lot of stress. She sends a motivational message through the app to her friends. This helps her to strengthen the friendship and it also helps Juana´s friends to know that there is a friend they can count on.
Esteban knows that physical activity is really important to wellness but he has a busy agenda and cant find the time to do physical activity. He fills the physical preference survey in the app and shows his activities calendar to the app, base in these information the app recomends a physical activity that is on Esteban´s interest and that can fit in his agenda. This ways Esteban gets a customized recommendation to an activity that he can do to help inprove his wellbeing.
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Quality attributes involved in the scenario: Eventual connectivity, Resilience.
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App status and context: The user is in a university basement, performing a 5-minute mindfulness activity.
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Changes in the context: The internet connection is completely lost mid-activity.
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System reaction to the changes in the context: The application continues the activity without interruption, as it does not depend on a real-time server. It saves progress locally and automatically synchronizes with the Context Data Service in the background once connectivity is restored, without the user having to repeat anything.
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Quality attributes involved in the scenario: Security, Privacy.
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App status and context: A new user is going through onboarding for the first time and reaches the screen asking for permission to save their mood and activity history to their account.
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Changes in the context: The user declines the permission, preferring to use the app without their data being stored or synced.
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System reaction to the changes in the context: The application immediately respects the choice: it disables calls to the User Account Service and the Context Data Service for that session, keeps all activity data only in local in-memory storage, which is erased when the application is closed, and allows the user to access all main features without affecting functionality; however, they will not be able to access features that require their data.
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Quality attributes involved in the scenario: Performance, Reliability.
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App status and context: A student is having a panic attack and taps the panic button to reach their trusted contact.
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Changes in the context: The connection is weak or unstable, and any delay could make the situation worse.
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System reaction to the changes in the context: The app first tries to call directly; if that fails within a few seconds, it automatically sends an SMS with the student's situation and last known location instead, so help reaches someone quickly no matter the connection.
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Quality attributes involved in the scenario: Security, Privacy.
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App status and context: A student who has used the app for months, logging mood check-ins and journal entries, decides to delete their account after graduating.
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Changes in the context: The user expects their data to actually be gone, not left sitting on servers.
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System reaction to the changes in the context: The app immediately ends the user's session, deletes their personal data and activity history, and keeps only anonymous, aggregated stats that can't be traced back to them.
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Quality attributes involved in the scenario: Scalability, Performance.
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App status and context: It is the final week of the semester, and thousands of students across the university are opening the app at similar times to use breathing exercises and check their support resources.
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Changes in the context: The number of concurrent users spikes far above the app's typical daily load.
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System reaction to the changes in the context: The application prioritizes serving locally cached content and core offline features (breathing exercises, panic button) without delay, while non-critical requests to the Context Data Service are queued and processed as server capacity allows, ensuring no student experiences a slowdown during time-sensitive features.
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Quality attributes involved in the scenario: Usability, Accessibility.
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App status and context: A student is experiencing a panic attack, and their hands are shaking, making it difficult to tap small or precisely placed buttons.
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Changes in the context: The student repeatedly mistaps or fails to hit the intended button on the first few attempts.
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System reaction to the changes in the context: The app detects the pattern of failed taps near the panic button's location and automatically enlarges the tap target area and increases spacing from nearby elements, allowing the student to successfully activate the panic button on a subsequent attempt without needing precise accuracy.
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Quality attributes involved: Usability.
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App status and context: Germán has a daily reminder enabled because he sometimes forgets to do his self-care activities. He is studying for his exams when the notification appears.
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Changes in the context: Germán is busy, so he dismisses the notification and continues studying.
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System reaction: The app does not send the same notification again and waits until the next scheduled reminder. Germán can still open the app and do an activity whenever he wants.
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Scenario name: Privacy when filtering analytics data.
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Quality attributes involved: Privacy, Security.
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App status and context: A member of the Student Support Staff is checking anonymous information about students’ moods and use of the app.
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Changes in the context: The staff member filters the information by department and date, and only a few students appear in the results.
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System reaction: The dashboard only shows group results. It does not show names, individual answers, or information that could identify a student.
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Quality attributes: Scalability, Performance
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App status and context: A student has been using the app consistently for 8 months, accumulating hundreds of mood check-ins and completed activities in their history.
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Changes in the context: The student opens the "Progress" screen to see their wellness trends over time, requiring the app to load and render months of accumulated historical data.
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System reaction: Instead of loading the full history at once, the app paginates the data and only fetches recent entries first (in the last 30 days), lazy-loading older records as the user scrolls back, and the Context Data Service pre-aggregates monthly summaries server-side so trend charts render instantly without recalculating from raw data every time.
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Quality attributes: Internationalization, Usability
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App status and context: An exchange student whose phone's system language is set to French opens the application for the first time; the application currently only has content available in English and Spanish.
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Changes in the context: The user opens the application and begins a guided breathing exercise, expecting the instructions and interface text to match their phone's language.
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System reaction: The application detects the device's system language and, since French is not yet supported, uses English by default instead of displaying untranslated or multilingual text. It also displays a small notification informing the user that they can switch between currently supported languages in the settings.
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Quality attributes involved in the scenario: Usability, Accessibility.
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App status and context: A student has color blindness and cannot distinguish the colors on the buttons and the use of the app gets harder.
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Changes in the context: The student activates the color blindness option in the settings.
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System reaction to the changes in the context: The app detects the change and the buttons and colors in the labels so the palette can be easily distinguish for the user.
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Quality attributes involved in the scenario: Fault Tolerance, Usability.
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App status and context: A user is typing a d journal entry following a stress-relief exercise.
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Changes in the context: An unexpected operating system memory clear causes the application to crash abruptly before the user taps "Save".
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System reaction to the changes in the context: The app continuously auto-saves draft inputs in secure local temporary storage; upon relaunching, it detects the ungraceful exit, seamlessly restores the unsaved text, and presents a non-intrusive prompt allowing the user to resume right where they left off.