Design interventions for promoting the mental health of young academics

Abstract

It is essential to graduate students to contribute researching in their academic field. Although it leads to the success of academic career path, the students are more at high risk of mental health problems. Thus, this study attempted to reveal underlying causes of the problems, figure out coping techniques and explore design interventions that can improve of graduate students’ mental health quality. We conducted interviews with one health professional expert and twenty-five graduate students. Design Sheet was created to elicit design solution ideas and distributed to ten professional designers. From the research, we have found out that graduate students are suffering from multiple reasons however there are unmet mental health needs among graduate students. By the end of the paper, we propose five design guidelines for designers to make products or services to promote mental health of graduate students.