A mobile companion for stress management for students in higher education

Abstract

Students are confronted with a lot of stressors: next to dealing with new instabilities regarding career and relationships, they also deal with deadlines and social conflicts at university. Stress is correlated with mental disorders such as anxiety, depression, and having suicidal thoughts and behavior. Even though there are several stress management applications developed in both academics and commercial mobile application stores, they lack proper user testing, lack helpful interactive content, or suffer from low adherence. In this project, we design and develop a mobile application that supports students in managing their stress. We use a user-centered approach to understand the needs and preferences of the students and to include features that effectively help them, improving their user experience. We make use of qualitative and quantitative methods. We have semi-structured interviews with teaching staff, and (student) psychologists as they are regularly exposed to (stressed) students. A survey and a focus group were conducted to get input from the students themselves and to gain insight into their situation and current coping methods. The results help us conclude to realize a general stress management app that is targeted to students and contains relevant topics. We combine theory in psychology regarding stress management with Human-Computer Interaction techniques (such as gamification and anthropomorphism) to solve the current shortcomings of existing studies and solutions.