=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2885/paper5.pdf
|storemode=property
|title=Doctoral Students’ Battle of Stress - Designing BCSS to Help Them Win the Battle: Searching for Design Improvements via Workshops with End-Users
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2885/paper5.pdf
|volume=Vol-2885
|authors=Markku Kekkonen,Harri Oinas-Kukkonen
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/persuasive/KekkonenO21
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==Doctoral Students’ Battle of Stress - Designing BCSS to Help Them Win the Battle: Searching for Design Improvements via Workshops with End-Users==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2885/paper5.pdf
Doctoral Students’ Battle of Stress - Designing BCSS to
Help Them Win the Battle: Searching for Design
Improvements via Workshops with End-Users
Markku Kekkonen and Harri Oinas-Kukkonen
Oulu Advanced Research on Service and Information Systems Group, Faculty of Information
Technology and Electrical Engineering, University of Oulu, Finland
markku.kekkonen@oulu.fi, harri.oinas-kukkonen@oulu.fi
Abstract. Doctoral students are experiencing stress due to work and doctoral
research related issues. They may also be vulnerable to technostress. Extensive
stress can have negative impact on one’s health via elevated stress hormone
levels, which are linked to several diseases. Technostress may add to the impact
via increased level of cortisol. Therefore, when intervening or trying to mitigate
stress experienced by doctoral students, technostress should also be taken into
consideration.
For tackling stress as well as technostress experienced by doctoral students, we
designed a prototype to help them in the process. Persuasive Systems Design
was used as the framework for designing the system and Self-Determination
Theory was used as theoretical background. Gamification was used as a support
mechanism for persuasion in the prototype.
With the help of the workshops, we were able to find both causes and ways to
mitigate stress and technostress for doctoral students. We were also able to ana-
lyse how to improve the design of the prototype to better suit the end-users.
Keywords: Stress, Technostress, Doctoral students, Persuasive Systems De-
sign, Gamification, Workshops, Design science.
1 Introduction
Stress can be positive in nature when it is desirable and deriving from exciting chal-
lenges. Negative stress or constantly being stressed out is undesirable as it is often
associated with chronic fatigue, worry, frustration and inability to cope [1]. Symp-
toms of stress and stress related health issues are experienced by approximately 30%
of European workers [2], so it is by no means an unfamiliar issue to the working pop-
ulation.
The situation could be even worse among students, especially those who work and
study at the same time. According to a study from 2012 [3], over 70% of graduate
students (N=387) reported a professional or personal stressor, which interfered with
their optimal performance. Psychological stressors can affect the cardiovascular con-
dition of people, especially if the stressor continues or people keeps imposing the
Copyright © 2021 for this paper by its authors.
Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
48 Ninth International Workshop on Behavior Change Support Systems (BCSS 2021):
Doctoral Students’ Battle of Stress - Designing BCSS to Help Them Win the Battle
stressor through brooding; however, stress effects and cardiac risks are modifiable by
changing behaviours and cognition with interventions [4]. Chronic stress can also lead
to burnout, which can be described as extreme fatigue and total lack of motivation;
graduate students and postdocs are especially vulnerable to excessive working, which
practically means chronic stress with no time for recovery [5]. Conducting PhD re-
search can be very stressful, but, as students are aware that it will take a lot of their
time, it may not be a significant stressor when compared with other time-consuming
duties related to graduate students and work [6].
The medium, information and communications technology or ICT, that is used for
working in almost all fields of academic jobs, can also generate stress. The stress
experienced by users of ICT is called technostress; a phenomenon, which derives
from the constantly changing and evolving ICTs, which nowadays affect all aspects of
life [7].
Long-term increase in cortisol, a stress hormone, can affect one’s health negative-
ly: elevated stress hormone levels may significantly influence the development of
disease; and are linked for example to chronic burnout, depression, abdominal obesi-
ty, suppression of immune function, high blood pressure, hardening of arteries and
sleep disorders [8]. It seems that not only traditional stress and stressors, but also
technostress may increase stress hormone levels. In the study from 2012 [8], one of
the most common types of technostress, system breakdown (error message), was stud-
ied from neurobiological perspective and it was shown that the level of cortisol, a
major stress hormone, was significantly increased in those experiencing the on-screen
error message. Therefore, managing only stress, while not trying to mitigate tech-
nostress may not be efficient. Both traditional stress and technostress affect one’s
body and health similarly from the neurobiological perspective. Moreover, there
seems to be lack of applications that try to mitigate technostress for users [9].
To address these issues, we decided to start developing a way to help doctoral stu-
dents to manage stress while taking mitigation of technostress into consideration.
Thus, a functioning prototype of web-based system to help doctoral students to “bat-
tle” stress was developed. The hands-on work was done by Master students in re-
search and design project course group. Two workshops were held with end-users to
help with the design. As regards the workshops and improving the design, we wanted
to know 1) what are the causes of stress and technostress for doctoral students, and
2) how to mitigate stress and technostress.
In the following sections, we will introduce the ‘background’ and related work re-
garding the topic, as well as the ‘prototype’. Workshops procedure, participants, re-
search method and analysis method will be described in ‘research setting’, after which
‘results’ are provided. Potential improvements for the design can be found from ‘dis-
cussion’ and the paper is concluded in the final chapter.
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Doctoral Students’ Battle of Stress - Designing BCSS to Help Them Win the Battle
2 Background
2.1 Theoretical Background
According to Johnson et al., persuasion differs from gamification in the sense that
persuasion often uses extrinsic motivators, whereas gamification motivates intrinsical-
ly [10]. Self-Determination Theory (SDT), emphasizes intrinsic motivation that re-
sults from motivational needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness [11]. How-
ever, SDT may be used successfully as the underlying theoretical background when
designing persuasive behaviour change sup-port systems [12] and gamified systems
[13]. Rewards, which could be associated with extrinsic motivation, albeit being in-
ternal rather than external, are a crucial part of gamification mechanisms [14]. SDT
does not exclude extrinsic motivations, but rather recognizes that extrinsically moti-
vated individuals can also become self-determined, while being committed and au-
thentic, especially if competence, autonomy, and relatedness are supported [11].
Extrinsic rewards may not work when targeting long-term behaviour change, thus
intrinsic motivation may be needed for persuading the end-user towards the target
behaviour. If extrinsic rewards are removed, recently changed behaviour may relapse
back to earlier habits, therefore intrinsic motivation could be needed for long-term
behaviour change. Therefore, both extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation
should be used in gamified persuasion if former is used to support the latter.
2.2 Domain Background
On one hand, there can be some short-term stress effects that are positive, for example
improvement of emotional states and enhanced memory; on the other hand, repeated
or long-term effects can be very harmful to one’s health [8]. Stress, a phenomenon
stemming from the stressors in environment, can be defined as either eustress (“good
stress”) or distress (“bad stress”), and it can also be a combination of both [15]. Expe-
rience of stress can be managed up to a point and individual’s perception and interpre-
tation of the experience of stress play a role in the process [15]. Stress resilience
seems to differ with individuals, depending on genetics and environmental factors, but
coping strategies e.g. dealing with challenges, facing fears, participation in problem
solving and seeking social support can be used to minimize the effects of stress; opti-
mism and positive reassessment on previous non-desirable experiences can also pro-
duce long-term stress resilience [16].
Technostress can result from ICT use that is related to hardware devices e.g. lap-
tops, mobile phones, and gaming consoles, as well as software applications e.g. social
networking sites, instant messaging apps and online games [17]. ICT use seems to be
constantly increasing in both occupational environments and free-time activities.
Technostress can result not only from active use of ICT e.g. excessive playing, but
also from push notifications, interruptions, and pressure to be constantly available
[17].
Users’ personal perception of their control over ICT, for example how s/he con-
trols the way ICT products and services are used e.g. email-free hours, can mitigate
50 Ninth International Workshop on Behavior Change Support Systems (BCSS 2021):
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technostress [18]. In addition to ICT control (pro-active), also positive reassessment
(pro-active), distress venting (reactive) and distancing (reactive) from ICT can func-
tion as coping tactics; however, for those individuals with high control of ICT, dis-
tress venting and distancing may have no effect, but for those with low or medium
ICT control, reactive coping strategies do help [19].
2.3 Design Background
According to Oinas-Kukkonen [20], “a behaviour change support system (BCSS) is a
sociotechnical information system with psychological and behavioural outcomes de-
signed to form, alter or reinforce attitudes, behaviours or an act of complying with-out
using coercion or deception.” Persuasive elements in BCSSs can engage users and
keep them motivated [21]. Persuasive technologies seem to be able persuade people to
change their behaviour towards a target behaviour [22] and affect individuals’ health
behaviours [23]. Therefore, using persuasive technologies should be beneficial for
applications that aim to help users manage stress and mitigate technostress. Further-
more, one way to tackle techno-stressors in Information Systems (IS) design is to
enhance enjoyment [9], for example by implementing gamification techniques. Much
like persuasion, gamification seems to work [24], and as regards stress management
apps, gamification techniques should be combined with a behaviour change theory
[25]. Similarly, Persuasive Systems Design (PSD) [26], should utilize at least one
behaviour change theory when a health BCSS is developed [20].
Persuasion and gamification seem to share other similar aspects, such as ethical
considerations [27-28]. Furthermore, according to Johnson et al., persuasion and gam-
ification both also share a similarity regarding the utilization of specific design prin-
ciples aiming for behaviour change or experience [10]. Thus, gamification can sup-
port persuasive design and regarding health BCSSs, gamification techniques can even
be considered as one type of persuasive design [29].
Persuasive Systems Design model is a framework for evaluating and designing
persuasive systems; there are seven postulates, ways to analyse persuasion context
and 28 design principles. Principles are divided into four categories: primary task
support, dialogue support, system credibility support, and social support. Persuasion
contexts is divided into three categories: the intent, the event, and the strategy. [26].
Gamification can be defined as description of features that can motivate and en-
gage end-users by utilizing game elements and mechanics [14]. Furthermore, gamifi-
cation affordances can be used at supporting and motivating the end-user towards a
targeted behaviour, or a goal, e.g. healthier habits [13].
3 System Prototype
The prototype targets stress management with technostress taken in consideration in
the design. The PSD model, SDT, gamification literature, and the O/C Matrix [20]
were used in the design process of the application prototype. Rehearsals, rewards,
reminders, and cooperation were chosen as persuasive features after PSD and O/C
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Doctoral Students’ Battle of Stress - Designing BCSS to Help Them Win the Battle
matrix analyses with SDT as theoretical background and gamification as support
mechanism.
3.1 Technology Context
The prototype was developed using the MEAN stack, an open source JavaScript
stack. The reasons for choosing this stack were availability of support and the tools
that can provide features such as email server, data logging, user login and authentica-
tion. Scalability was taken into consideration, thus database as well as back-end and
front-end of the application was containerized using Docker containers, as they are
more efficient than traditional virtual machines, support multi-server clusters and they
can potentially use less server resources. Red Hat Linux server was used to host the
system. See figure 1 for architecture.
The prototype was implanted as web-based client-server application. Via admin
panel, administrators may add different type of categories and rehearsals as well as
edit content, edit calendar, set up and edit user groups/views and switch each persua-
sive feature on/off for either whole user groups/users.
These features allow to use the application for other themes besides stress, as there is
the possibility to add several different categories and/or rehearsals. It also allows hav-
ing different content between same themes, as it is possible to give access to chosen
content to one group/user and other context to different groups. Similarly, as each
feature can be turned on/off for each user group/user, the application allows various
possibilities for different experiments.
Fig. 1. Overall architecture for the web app prototype.
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3.2 Persuasive features
Based on SDT, we selected to focus on four persuasive features: Rehearsal, Rewards,
Reminders and Cooperation.
Rehearsals utilizing gamification techniques will provide means for rehearsing
target behaviour and motivate the user intrinsically. Optimal challenge and progres-
sive information will satisfy need for competence (SDT). The prototype has rehearsals
for positive reassessment that may incorporate gamification mechanisms e.g. score.
Similarly, there are rehearsals for muscle relaxation and for sleep disorders, and
users will be able to earn badges by completing the rehearsals, thus from rehearsing
the target behaviour. Rehearsal types can be divided into animated timed rehearsals
(see figure 2), manually proceeding rehearsals (see figure 3) and gamified rehearsals
(see figure 4).
Fig. 2. Animated time rehearsals allow the users to go through the rehearsal without having to
touch the keyboard.
Animated timed rehearsals allow the user for example to do breathing exercises in a
predefined pace, whereas manually proceeding rehearsals allow the user to proceed in
his/her own pace.
Fig. 3. Manually proceeding rehearsals allow the users to go through the rehearsal on their own
pace.
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Doctoral Students’ Battle of Stress - Designing BCSS to Help Them Win the Battle
Gamified rehearsals allow the user to “play” them by answering correctly to prede-
fined statements while the rehearsals keep score and awards badges.
Fig. 4. Example of gamified rehearsal.
Rewards in the form of badges will be giving the users credit for performing the tar-
get behaviour, thus “playing” by completing rehearsals. Points, levels, and positive
feedback will satisfy the need for competence (SDT). See figure 5 for example of
points/score in the prototype.
Fig. 5. Gamified rehearsals keep score on correct answers.
Users will receive badges and will be able to see which badges they are missing.
However, there will not be a leaderboard nor will users be able to see what badges
others have - to avoid competition. See figure 6 for example of badges.
Fig. 6. Gamified rehearsals keep score on correct answers.
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Reminders, in the form of emails, will be for engaging users, as well as for remind-
ing them of the target behaviour. Email addresses of the users will not be given to
other users and users have access to notification settings. Taking privacy into consid-
eration and enabling notification control will satisfy the need for autonomy (SDT).
Reminders will also be used for supporting other features, for example cooperation.
Cooperation in the form of groups and connection to social networks will satisfy
the need for relation (SDT). Users will be able to use a feature for connecting with
other users. They will be able to notify others that they are available for a coffee break
(distancing and venting distress should also mitigate technostress).
When three people have selected the same date, time and place, a coffee break “team”
will be formed and the members will be notified via separate emails. See figure 7 for
example of meetup calendar.
Fig. 7. In this example the user has successfully checked date and time for break and will re-
ceive an email after other users have chosen the same date and time.
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4 Research Setting
4.1 Workshops
The workshops were advertised via email sent to all doctoral students of the universi-
ty. They were also advertised on doctoral student sections Facebook group and web
page. The workshops were meant as low threshold opportunities for discussing stress
and technostress with one’s peers, and pizza and soft drinks were served for partici-
pants. We managed to recruit eleven participants, who were divided into consecutive
days due to their personal schedules: first workshop had four participants and the
second workshop had seven participants. A statement for privacy and request for con-
sent were provided for the participants at the beginning of each workshop.
The concepts of stress as well as technostress were explained at the beginning of
each workshop to avoid any misunderstandings. Semi-structured layout was used: the
participants wrote down types and causes of stress and technostress, after which they
wrote down ways to mitigate stress and technostress. The results were written into A3
papers taped on walls and discussed together. New insights were written also into A3
papers discussed too. To avoid having the participants “design” the prototype, but
rather inclined on gaining fresh insights, we revealed that a prototype was being de-
signed only at the end of the workshops.
4.2 Participants
Participants from the two workshops (11 in total) were anonymized for this study as
per statement of privacy, since the workshops dealt with stress, which may be sensi-
tive subject for some. The participants represented several different fields of study,
e.g. education, science, and technology. Average age was 32,5. Most of the partici-
pants were either on their first or second year of studies with two participants on their
third year or more. Five were employed by the university without a grant or stipend,
whereas five others had a grant or stipend while being employed by the university;
only one participant was funded by other means. Only two participants were from
Finland, whereas nine participants were from different parts of the world with differ-
ent cultural backgrounds.
4.3 Research method
For this paper, “Workshops as a Research Method: Guidelines for Designing and
Evaluating Artifacts Through Workshops” was utilized as research method [30].
Thoring et al. discuss evaluation rather than design in more details, but their work can
be adapted for designing as well [30]. Thematic analysis [31] was utilized for the
actual analysis process for the results. See table 1 for principles as regards the re-
search method and how they were set for this study
.
56 Ninth International Workshop on Behavior Change Support Systems (BCSS 2021):
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Table 1. Workshop evaluation and design principles.
Principle
Focus definition People’s Opinion and Ideas; What may be caus-
ing stress and technostress for doctoral students
and how to mitigate stress and technostress;
Focus is on improving our prototype; Survey and
Group Discussion was used (good suitability for
design goal). Notes submitted after group discus-
sion by the participants were also used for the
analysis.
Role allocation One researcher was both facilitating discussion
and collecting data. Bias was minimized as
member of the student group developing the
prototype was present taking notes. Further min-
imization of bias was done by discussing and
deciding terms together and by participants mak-
ing notes.
Triangulation Participants’ background survey and the results
of group discussion are presented.
Transparency Design goal and research questions. Methods and
analysis. Participants anonymized details. Work-
shop course and workshop results are presented.
Reflection Insights about the design process would be the
following: we feel that Observation & Notes as
regards People’s Opinion and Ideas could be
suitable up to a point as recording may put peo-
ple off; Role allocation may be difficult, as it
could take several different stakeholders to elim-
inate risk of bias – same could be achieved with
fever stakeholders and proper planning before-
hand; Currently the proposed evaluation process
suits evaluation better than design – but it seems
to work for both.
4.4 Thematic analysis
Thematic analysis [31] was used for analysing the data from the workshops. The
analysis process was conducted in two separate analyses: 1) inductive thematic analy-
sis and 2) deductive thematic analysis. Inductive thematic analysis was for deriving
the context as regards causes of stress and technostress. The deductive thematic anal-
ysis used PSD and the four persuasive features of the prototype as the frame for de-
ducting potential improvements for prototype design while taking the context into
consideration. NVivo 12 by QSP International was used as the software tool for the
analysis.
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5 Results
Ten out of eleven participants had experienced stress during the past year regarding
their work and studies. One participant without an experience of stress explained that
s/he had ways of coping with stress; s/he also answered that s/he had not experienced
technostress during the past year. The others had experienced not only stress during
the past year, but all of them had also experienced technostress during that period.
5.1 Causes of Stress
The causes of stress for doctoral students could be divided into two main themes: 1)
Work, and 2) Life. See tables 2 and 3 for sub-categories and refined themes.
Table 2. Sub-categories and refined themes for “Work”.
Sub-category Refined themes
Doctoral research issues Deadlines
Reading and writing
Unable to meet targets set for self
Uncertainty about the future
Research pressures
Lack of support (for research)
University curriculum
Monthly meeting with supervisor
Other work-related issues Heavy workload
Abilities and competencies
Changes in work requirements
Difficulties to plan ahead
Time management
Doctoral research issues discussed were mostly related to conducting studies (writing,
reading, deadlines et cetera), which is natural when considering the participants of the
workshops. However, lack of support and pressure from supervisor and other stake-
holders were discussed also, as well as uncertainty of what happens after doctoral
dissertation. Also, university curriculum requirements as source of pressure were
brought up. It seems that as the actual work of gradually becoming a Ph.D. could
mean a lot of work, the hardship is elevated by external pressure. Doctoral students
may struggle with the idea or fear that the research of larger group of people may
depend on their work while they are still learning how to do research and thus they
would need more support.
As for causes related to personal life of doctoral students, loneliness was brought
up and discussed several times in both workshops. This was due to most of partici-
pants being from abroad. Those participants thought that it was difficult to be in a
strange country, where the language is different from theirs. Difficulty of finding a
partner was also tied to being in different culture and/or language-area. For those that
were from a more family-oriented culture, it seemed also very difficult to reside in
different country than their family. However, also starting family life and losing free-
58 Ninth International Workshop on Behavior Change Support Systems (BCSS 2021):
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dom after having kids was discussed as a cause of stress. As some of the issues re-
flected cultural differences, they may not affect doctoral students at large.
Also, people from different continent were not used to lack of sun (in the winter)
and bad weather, which stressed them out. Additionally, as people in general may,
participants also suffered from some health difficulties: elevating heartbeat, musculo-
skeletal problems, insomnia, and irritation; of which the latter two may either be signs
and/or causes of stress.
Table 3. Sub-categories and refined themes for “Life”.
Sub-category Refined themes
Relationships Loneliness
Managing family life
Finding a romantic partner
Personal health Insomnia
Quality of sleep
Irritation
Elevating heartbeat
Musculoskeletal problems
Environment Lack of sun and bad weather
Different culture or language
Family is in another country
5.2 Causes of Technostress
Similarly, as for stress, causes of technostress were mostly around work-related is-
sues. However, there were some issues related to everyday life. See table 4 and 5 for
sub-categories and refined themes.
Table 4. Sub-categories and refined themes for “Work”
Sub-category Refined themes
Research related issues Learning new programs
Using specific software
Bugs in software
Updating software
Compiling new datasets and/or instruments
Different syntax/logic in new program code
Research results
Non-research related issues Overload on communication
Using programs
Usability/user interface problems with programs
Overload on information
Participants seemed to struggle with learning to use new work-specific software,
for example R, SPSS and RefWorks. Updating software, requirements for technical
knowledge, bugs, and differences in syntax and/or logic in code were discussed and
seen as causing technostress. Additionally, compiling new datasets and/or instru-
ments, unexpected results and reporting were deemed also causing technostress.
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Communication, especially mobile communication, was brought up as the partici-
pants felt that smartphones have changed the way how one must be constantly “reach-
able” not only via calls or text messages, but also via email and social media. Phone
addiction was causing a lot of technostress, as some participants mentioned having
difficulties at leaving their phones alone (and computers as well) and had to be con-
stantly checking their phones up until before going to bed.
Table 5. Sub-categories and refined themes for “Life”
Sub-category Refined themes
Communication Phone and/or computer addiction
Social media
Personal health Game addiction
TV addiction
Phone addiction may be a reflection from major changes of how nowadays people
have to be “reachable” at all times. The evolution of smartphones during the last dec-
ade or two have enabled mobile communication in ways that could have seemed like
science fiction if someone would have predicted the future at the beginning of the
new millennium. However, the downsides of this evolution may be causing stress and
especially technostress via the notion that everyone everywhere could be instantly
reached thanks to new technology.
5.3 Stress and Technostress mitigation
The inductive analysis main themes (Work and Life) were used as starting point for
the deductive analysis to reflect on the persuasive features of the prototype. In the
deductive thematic analyses, findings were integrated and set into the PSD model
principles present in the prototype: cooperation, rehearsal, reminders, rewards.
Analysis on both stress and technostress were done separately. See table 6 for stress
mitigation and table 6 for technostress mitigation.
Table 6. Stress mitigation in the prototype context
Persuasive feature Refined themes
Rehearsal Physical exercises
Positive attitude
Mental concentration
Learning time management
Relaxation exercises
Reminders Deadlines
Rewards Positive feedback
Cooperation Working with others
As found out from causes of stress, loneliness was a major issue especially among
foreign students, so having someone to talk with and talking with peers were seeing as
easing the loneliness somewhat. The prototype already has a feature for cooperation,
basically enabling the opportunity to meet people. One of the original ideas were to
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enable the ability to cooperate on doing rehearsals with the people one can meet via
the app, but unfortunately as the prototype was developed as student project, we did
not have resources to finish the idea. Some form of evolved cooperation function will
be considered to be implemented in the future.
Exercising, time management, sleeping, mental concentration, thinking positive
and trusting yourself were seen as ways of mitigating stress, and in the app, we al-
ready had implemented ways to have basic rehearsals as regard mental concentration,
breathing et cetera. Busting deadlines was seen as mitigating work-related stress and
could be connected to reminders. Having fun, playing games, and getting positive
feedback, and compliments and assurances could similarly be connected to rewards in
the prototype, as users may receive rewards for “playing” the rehearsals
Table 7. Technostress mitigation in the prototype context
Persuasive feature Refined themes
Rehearsal Distancing
Positive attitude
Reminders Device/application setting reminder
Rewards Technology free time
Cooperation Working together
Regarding mobile phones as major causes of technostress, setting one’s phone to grey
scale (with the help of reminders) at evening was discussed as one way to deal with
the issues, and the same could be applied to computer screens as well. It should be
noted however, that such features already exist in major operating systems as regards
phones and computers/screens. Thus, it should not have need for external reminders,
unless one has phones or computers/screens without such function. As for taking
breaks and thinking positive, those could be implemented similarly as rehearsals and
could even be basically same rehearsals as those aiming to mitigate stress. As for
‘helping someone’ that was brought up in the group discussions, cooperation feature
could be used for working together. Meeting people with different skillsets could
open new opportunities to not only learn something new, but also to share one’s own
knowledge and help others. Technology free time e.g. going to the nature was seen
rewarding per se.
6 Discussion
Based on the workshops and preliminary results after the workshops, we have already
improved design on cooperation. Loneliness and not belonging was constantly brough
up by the workshop participants, and the participants thought that it could help if you
could meet people from your own cultural background and converse with your native
language. Therefore, we decided to add a feature into the ‘coffee break’ meetup inter-
face: one can also determine whether the other parties should speak the same lan-
guage e.g. Finnish, English or Arabic. Based on the results of the analysis, other op-
tions could also be added e.g. field of study or faculty, country of origin et cetera. The
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cooperative meetup feature could also be used for example setting up teams that could
together cooperate on practicing using work specific programs e.g. R or SPSS.
As for reminders, it could be possible to implement an advanced reminder function
for reminding about deadlines, but since there should be plentiful of those available
e.g. basic smartphone calendar reminders, it might not serve the purpose. However, if
the users would use the web app anyway, having work related deadlines separated
from personal smartphones into specific place e.g. view in the app coupled with email
reminder could work for some. Balancing personal life and work was also discussed
in the workshops and thus separating personal and work mediums e.g. smartphone
could reduce stress on as instead of push notifications on your personal phone, the
reminder would be sent to your work email.
As for rewards in the prototype, there could be room to improve the design of the
rewards to make them more fun. The badges used for rewards as well as the actual
mechanics of the gamified rehearsals should also better resemble the users that when
doing the gamified rehearsals - they are “playing”, and they should not take it too
seriously. However, the score system should make one want to positively “beat the
system” and could be used for seeing and reflecting the “right” strategies. Doing the
rehearsals should also be fun, as they are designed to be simple, easy to use and easy
to follow.
The rehearsals in the prototype are currently for positive image and reassessment,
as well as for classic solutions e.g. muscle relaxation and breathing exercises. The
categories and rehearsals can be added and edited relatively flexibly, but the actual
rehearsal types may not support themes like time management that well. Therefore,
there may be room for improvement also on the set up of rehearsals.
Naturally, there were limitations in our work. Even though there were only two
workshops, similar themes and issues were discussed in both workshops by the partic-
ipants. Therefore, we think that in this case it was possible to reach saturation with
two workshops, but if there would have been more enrolled participants, third work-
shop may or may not have given some additional (but minor) insights. The thematic
analysis process was done by single researcher, but preliminary themes and the actual
codes in the data sets were collected and discussed together in the workshops, thus
reducing researcher bias.
7 Conclusions
Designing applications for specific target groups should utilize ways to learn more
about the actual end users. Via the workshops and their analysed results, we managed
to learn much about doctoral students’ stress and technostress. These findings had an
immediate effect on the prototype design right after the workshops and as we continue
the project, findings will be taken into consideration for further improving the design.
As practical implications, this paper describes one way of improving existing per-
suasive designs and how to involve end users into design process. Additionally, uni-
versity staff members may find it useful to know the causes of stress and technostress
for doctoral students e.g. excessive workload and lack of support.
62 Ninth International Workshop on Behavior Change Support Systems (BCSS 2021):
Doctoral Students’ Battle of Stress - Designing BCSS to Help Them Win the Battle
As for theoretical implications, it may not always be clear on how one should do
design science research or persuasive design for that matter. In this paper we have
presented on example of doing research on improving design. This paper used the
guidelines and general principles for evaluating and designing artefacts through end-
user workshops, and as the framework concept as research method is new, the reflec-
tion we provided could help improve the framework further.
There are also plans for future research. As the prototype was developed as a stu-
dent project, we hired a student trainee for a month to continue some aspects of the
prototype. We also placed an order for another student project group to continue the
development with us. In addition to technical issues as regards the prototype, we will
be improving the design of the prototype and the workshop results will be useful for
that. Once all necessary improvements are implemented and technical aspects of the
prototype are functioning well enough, we aim to do an experiment with the proto-
type.
Acknowledgements. We wish to thank Heidi Hietala, Tommi Laivamaa, Ville
Salminen, Arttu Kruuti, Johannes Lauri and Niklas Menard for working with us on
the prototype. We also wish to thank University of Oulu Graduate School, University
of Oulu Human Resources, and all the workshop participants.
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