We Are All In This Together
We Are All In This Together is an online workshop with a series of collaborative activities to cope with international students’ COVID-19 mental stress.
Group Project
Role: Workshop facilitation, Art direction
Tools: Miro, Adobe Illustrator, iMovie
Duration: 10 Weeks (01.2021 - 03.2021)
Problem Statement
Due to the long-lasting pandemic and having been through lockdowns and studying from home as a consequence, the COVID-19 pandemic has put a toll on students.
Particularly, the level of stress, especially mental stress, has increased among international students who still reside in their host countries. While living and studying in a foreign country has already been a major stressor for international students, COVID-19 is even threatening their mental health.
As the pandemic is at an all-time high, it is crucial to maintain a healthy mentality. Therefore, this project aims to have a collaborative experience with international students to come up with innovative ideas for relieving COVID-19 related mental stress.
Intent Statement
How might we relieve international students' COVID-19 mental stress and cope with maintaining their healthy mentality?
Project Timeline
Mind Mapping
The project started with creating a mind map to understand the spectrum of COVID-19 and to decide which specific area of focus to deliver our workshop.
Considering the feasibility as well as reachability of potential participants of the workshop, international students were considered as main participants, and coping with their mental health was the key issue for the workshop.
Secondary Research
A round of secondary research was conducted by going through online databases including journals, news articles, and reports to gather information on international students suffering from the COVID pandemic. The research concluded with having two major takeaways.
Workshop Goal
The workshop was further planned based on three goals that were derived from the collected data of secondary research.
Group Composition
After the secondary research, the group composition for the workshop was created and it was expected to invite ten participants from three different stakeholder categories under the entity of international students.
Group Selection
Various measures of different intensity have been implemented to deal with the fast spread of the virus throughout the world. Consequently, the impact an international student has received would also vary depending on where they reside and study. The participants were divided into three big categories; those who stay in the US, those who reside elsewhere, and the ones who returned home.
Concerns & Opportunities
What triggers or has triggered mental stress varies from person to person and might be personal. Therefore, it is crucial to pay extra attention when approaching the chosen topic.
Mental health is a very open-ended topic to discuss and has an opportunity to provide an unconventional approach to codevelop solutions with participants.
The workshop and the expected outcomes can be suggested as an example or guideline to cope with other pandemic-related situations.
Activity Brainstorming
Activities that include one ice breaker and two co-creation activities for the workshop were brainstormed.
To check the feasibility and prevent confusion, a quick round of testing with an international student testee was conducted. The activities went through an iteration based on the received feedback.
Workshop Preparation
To figure out the best time availability as well as the platform of the workshop, a quick survey was conducted with 10 potential participants and received 6 responses. An invitation that included the date and time reflecting different time zones and a Zoom link was created and shared through WhatsApp and WeChat.
A Miro board that included a welcome letter and activity templates was created to be utilized as the workshop platform.
Workshop Sneak Peek
Workshop Evaluation
Data Analysis
To gather insights and seek opportunities based on the workshop activities, a round of affinity mapping was implemented in which all data points were retrieved from the recording of the workshop.
After reaching the Greens, ten insights were collected and they were categorized into two sectors; pain-points of participants and activities they have tried.
Personas
Based on the insights, two personas representing the goals and pain points of an international student residing outside their home country and an international student returnee who returned to their hometown were developed.
Design Opportunities
As a conclusion of facilitating the workshop, three design opportunities were created which could be further developed into solid interventions to release the pandemic mental stress.
