Mental wellbeing is a growing concern for many young adults today. Digital products and services could support young adults by automatically and unobtrusively measuring mental wellbeing, and delivering feedback and interventions, but current applications are hampered by a lack of knowledge about what constitutes mental wellbeing for young adults, and what design requirements exist for products and services.
This study, published as a conference paper at DRS2024 applied a “provotyping” method with questionnaires and interviews to add to this knowledge. Provotyping, using “provocative prototypes” of (in this case) mental wellbeing measurement designs, is an effective method to help people from different social groups and background think and talk about experiences and ideas that they normally find difficult to access or are reluctant to discuss. The provotypes do not need to be effective in actually measuring mental wellbeing but serve as a gentle and safe provocation to elicit discussion.
Results show that mental wellbeing is broader than the usual hedonic and eudaimonic aspects, encompassing also social, psychosocial, health- / activity-related, and relaxation-related aspects. Design requirements for future mental wellbeing interventions for young adults include: tailoring of defining aspects to personal prefer- ence and situations, building algorithms that learn from user input, providing continuous unobtrusive measurement, and burden minimalisation. This research shows that using sensors and algorithms for mental wellbeing support for young adults is still in its early stages and offers insights to inform next steps in design research in this area.
This work received financial supported from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), grant number OP-2014-2023-Oost-PROJ-01005.