Self Care Study Break Process Guide
What is it?
Self-care at Emerson College has an established framing that, based on our conversations with students, does not work for everybody. Not all students have the same self-care practices. Additionally, the lack of diverse self-care activities and self-care media can further drive isolation in students. Undergraduate students, especially those who are new to college, tend to have difficulty balancing academics, extracurriculars, social life, and time for themselves.
I am detailing an overview of our project process in this page, but you can read the entire design book :
Design Process
Duration: 1.5 months
Team Capacity: 3
Role: Ideation, Research and Usability Testing Lead
Methods: Design Thinking, solution mapping, stakeholder maps, user interviews, ideation, idea sketching, user personas, field scans, prototyping. user testing
Mission and Goal Setting
"How might we provide alternative self-care opportunities for Emerson College’s undergraduate population?"
Our mission is to create a low-barrier, inclusive space for undergraduate students to practice self-care together. By incorporating a variety of different self-care practices either provided by the college or brought by the students, Self Care Study Breaks seek to challenge the college’s pre-existing frameworks around self-care and promote a sense of community
Research
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
- who are we designing for?
- why might students need this design intervention?
- what needs to happen for this design to occur?
STAKEHOLDER MAPPING
FIELD SCANS
My Team and I engaged in exploring the campus and its resources both physically and digitally
USER INTERVIEWS
I conducted interviews with Olivia Hu and Pranit Chand and my partners interviewed Codie Patnaude
OVERALL RESEARCH INSIGHTS:
- People have very different self-care practices, depending on both personal preference and time commitments.
- Emerson hosts self-care events, but theevents are not always well. attended.
- Preexisting supports such as the counseling center and peer mentor programs are not well-maintained or well-received
by students
Ideation
TEN IDEAS AND THREE SKETCHES:
An ideation technique where we brainstorm ten complete ideas - pick three the team likes the most and sketch the three big favourite ideas. We present all of them to the other feedback committees. If the feedback generated favors one of the sketches, they are further developed. If feedback favors unsketched ideas, we bring back sketches. If none of the ideas are selected we re-iterate and go back to the brainstorming process.
You can find our entire ideation process in our design book (pg 15)
IDEA SELECTED: Self Care Study Break Room
Development
USER DEFINITION
When designing, we tried to answer the questions we considered at the beginning of our brainstorming process.
1. Who is this for?
2. How could students participate?
3. Why might students need this space?
4. How could this idea become a reality?
USER PERSONAS
We relied mostly on our interview data and our own experiences as students at Emerson to understand our users and ask some of the questions. personas did not play a large part, but in order to create people to think about as we went on, we developed two distinct personas based upon our interviews and experiences.
LOCATION SCOUTING
Since our project is space-based, we went location scouting in order to select spaces for our idea to work at.
Images 1 and 2 (left-right) 2 Boylston Street common area
“Friends” couch, located in the Lion
The Reflection Room, located in 172 Tremont
Prototype
A special room specifically designed for students to go in and relax in- play, heal, and exist in a calming. non-judgemental space
Testing
We tested our prototype with actual undergraduate students and got feedback and more to improve the result. You can view our exercise here:
Futures
After implementing our prototype and pitching our idea to other Emerson students and Media Design staff, we were left with ideas about how Self Care Study Breaks could be a permanent fixture of Emerson student life and culture. Although some students we spoke to liked the idea of having the study break spaces be open 24/7, others voiced worries about how the space would be maintained intentionally and with care if it were to be open all of the time.
One idea that was proposed involved curating the Self Care Study Break series around preexisting highstress time periods. Reading period, for example, is a point in the semester when students have a lot of work to complete and are simultaneously experiencing burnout. Intentionally activating a study break space for that specific period of time would help enshrine the practice in Emerson College culture
