Digital Technologies for Mental Wellbeing

Studying human-centred technology design at QUT is all about teaming up with brilliant students for hands-on projects in the real world, known as work-integrated learning (WIL). This year, we joined forces with Dr Priyanka Naidu and William Smith-Stubbs from Mettlesome to delve into digital technologies aimed at enhancing mental well-being through mood tracking.

Exploring the Potential of Mood-Tracking App in Team Environments

Moods are a natural part of our emotional rhythm and a big part of how we behave and think. Tracking our moods can help us understand what causes them, manage negative moods like stress, and feel better faster.

Mettlesome is developing a mood-tracking app called Toucan (soon to be relaunched as hellodala.com) that supports teams so people can become aware of their moods and how their colleagues feel. This app has the potential to create teams and workplaces in which members can share how they feel and thrive. This data provides insights into team members' moods and habits, allowing the team to observe trends and patterns over time and share information about their moods.

To explore these questions, we partnered with Mettlesome in our human-centred design for IT class. The core philosophy of human-centred design is to partner with technology users throughout the design and development process to create functional, usable technologies and provide a positive experience.

Real-World Assignments and Project Outcomes

For their assignments, students conducted interviews and diary studies with fellow students to examine the potential of team-based mood tracking and their perception of benefits and potential risks, such as privacy. They used these insights to evaluate the usability and experience of the mood-tracking app in their everyday lives. Based on these observations, students created detailed and actionable recommendations for improving the design of the app.

The real-world partnership led to a fantastic showcase event where the top students in the class got to meet with Mettlesome and share their results, design ideas, and recommendations. Looking back on the semester, it's clear that this WIL project was a huge success, creating significant value for all of us and highlighting the mutual benefits of our partnership.

Students gained experience working on real-world problems and honed their professional communication skills with industry partners. This project gave them a portfolio to showcase their technology design skills in future job applications, a tangible testament to their growth and accomplishments.

Industry partners can benefit from engaging with our class to gain diverse perspectives on their technology designs and evaluate them before product release. This can result in the creation of more user-friendly and effective products. Additionally, there is the potential to meet passionate and talented IT graduates who may be interested in joining their team after graduation.

As an educator, I couldn't be prouder of the great ideas and discussions that emerged at the showcase event.

Maximising Your Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) Experience

For students in WIL projects, it's important to take advantage of the chance to talk and work with companies. This will give you a taste of what real work is like. Try to find out what companies are interested in and make sure your assignments reflect those interests. This will help you come up with great ideas that are relevant to the industry.

For educators, it's essential to find partners and topics that matter to students and that are accessible to a diverse group of students. Mental wellbeing is a perfect match for students, and my research is in the Digital Wellbeing Lab, a research initiative focused on digital self-care for mental health.

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Special Thanks

Thank you to everyone who took part in this project, and especially everyone who presented in the showcase - April Shao, Joana Felicia Latief, Jasdev Bedi, Kishen Lodhia, Katie Tran, Nok Hei Tung, Maryam Jamshidi - I was very proud to see all the great ideas and discussions in the room. I thank Saminda Sundeepa Balasuriya for teaching this unit with me. Thank you to the wonderful team at Mettlesome and Dala Health for partnering with us.

About the Author

Dr Bernd Ploderer is a Human-Computer Interaction researcher at the QUT School of Computer Science. Working primarily in health and wellbeing domains, he studies, designs, and evaluates interactive technologies to help people make sense of data about themselves and the world around them. Dr Ploderer leads the QUT Digital Wellbeing Lab at QUT, which aims to co-create a future in which technologies support people and communities to thrive.