Helping College Students to Manage Stress: A Human Centered Smartphone Application for Stress Relief
This paper discuses a major topic, i.e. “stressed students while in college”, that is essential to both society and students. It includes only the first two stages of the Human-Centered Design life cycle (Identify Needs, Research/Analysis, Design, Evaluat
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Abstract This paper discuses a major topic, i.e. “stressed students while in college”, that is essential to both society and students. It includes only the first two stages of the Human-Centered Design life cycle (Identify Needs, Research/Analysis, Design, Evaluation and Delivery). The importance of this topic is revealed when we realize that stress can affect students internally and externally. In addition, knowing the possible causes of stress helps students to manage and relieve their stress. Three major factors (i.e. academic, social and personal/family) are identified to be the main sources of stress and each factor has sub-factors that are discussed in detail. Based on our findings and analysis, we propose two approaches for students to handle stress in college: time management systems and social support systems. Keywords Stress Rewarding systems
Human-centered design Social support systems
Time management systems
1 Introduction The term stress comes from the Latin stringere, that means,“to draw tight”. Stress is defined as “a negative emotional, cognitive, behavioral and physiological process that occurs as a person tries to adjust to or deal with stressors” [1]. Stressors are defined as “circumstances that disrupt, or threaten to disrupt, individuals’ daily functioning and cause people to make adjustments” [1]. Being stressed is a serious matter in college. It makes students unhappy and it does not allow them to enjoy S. Almesalm (&) L. Stephane G. Boy School of Human Centered Design, Innovation and Art, 150 West University Blvd, Melbourne, FL 32901, USA e-mail: salmesalm2014@my.fit.edu L. Stephane e-mail: lstephane@fit.edu G. Boy e-mail: gboy@fit.edu © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 J.I. Kantola et al. (eds.), Advances in Human Factors, Business Management, Training and Education, Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing 498, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-42070-7_73
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their moments. In fact, it enables them to react irrationally toward specific events. Stress could break up relationships between couples, friends or any other type of relationships. It is important to know that students handle stress differently, some of them coping with stress faster and more efficiently, others taking more time. Counseling and psychological services on campus support students academically and personally. However, this sort of support may fail to reach students in an efficient time. The use of smartphones has extended students’ cognitive and emotional abilities beyond traditionally recognized boundaries of personal physical embodiment. Mitigations to encourage successful psychological functioning and social interactions of college students should account for this cognitive prosthesis [2]. Thus, leveraging smartphone technology may offer a solution that enables to understand and purposefully engineer successful interactions between technology, organizations and people. Therefore, it is considered that Human Centered Design (HCD) is helpful for exploring and providing a solu
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