Explore and Innovate: Phase 3
3 Initial Solution Concepts (Weeks 4 & 5)
Solution 1: Tool Kit for Destressing
Story Board
Low Fidelity Prototype
The tool kit is supposed to help incoming international students during their freshman year. We imagine the tool kit to be distributed to Asian international students during orientation week. Freshmen students have a hard time adjusting to a new environment where they are not around the people they were surrounded by. Asian people in general are prone to avoid seeking for mental help due to cultural difference of how people perceive mental health so international students from Asia get less help from a therapist or a counselor than other students. With the tool kit, we are hoping that Asian international students could take their first step to reassuring themselves that it is ok to reach out for help.
The tool kit provides a notepad, green tea, and a set of sticky notes with encouraging statements along with soft cotton poms that has a nice scent. The notepad is designed to allow students to keep a journal of their mental health. Journaling about your feelings are known to help people to understand themselves more. The sticky notes are designed to reassure students when they are feeling down.
Solution 2: Interactive Sharing Space for Fostering Communication and Connections
Story Board
Low Fidelity Space Mockup
"React and Connect" Stickers
This interactive sharing space serves as a platform to encourage self-reflection, foster communication, and build connections within the CMU community. Due to an identified issue being Asian students are 3 times less-likely to speak up and seek for mental health support, the concept of this solution is to allow students to be able to anonymously share their personal story or issues/struggles.
Through writing and posting on the wall, the student will be able to gain support through others’ sticker reacts and comments. Connections and small support groups can also be formed with other CMU students who resonate with a specific post/issue on the wall (by them writing on and leaving a yellow sticker or reaching out to others who left a sticker). Overall, this solution concept focuses on building student-to-student relationships at CMU to help students understand that no one is alone when struggling with or facing any mental health issues, and that there are others in this community who have similar feelings or are willing to provide support.
Solution 3: Matching Freshmen to Mentors with Similar Experiences
Story Board
Low Fidelity Prototype
This app serves to help incoming freshmen feel less alone in their starkly new environments. An AI helps match mentors to mentees from similar backgrounds: hometown, academic school, culture, and topic of stress. The mentee can tell the AI what aspects they want their mentee to have the most; for example, it may be less important to a mentee that their mentor be in the same school within CMU but more important that they share the same culture. This intervention serves as an addition to CaPS. It is the mentor’s job to periodically check up on his or her mentee’s mental health.
