Facilitated Collaborative Group Design of Hypothetical Digital Tools to Understand University Students’ Support Needs and Requirements

The number of students in higher education encountering issues with their well-being is increasing every year, and many struggle to seek appropriate support. Digital tools may be best placed to address their needs; however, it is important to include the student voice throughout the design process as students are arguably experts of their own experiences and how they want their needs to be met. The aim of the present research was to involve and amplify the student voice in understanding the domains in which they want support, their views on existing digital supports, and their desired features in a digital support. Undergraduate students enrolled in a well-being module at UCD completed a facilitated group assignment in which they were required to propose a concept for a hypothetical digital tool to support other students in a domain of their choice. Deductive thematic analysis of the 10-min presentation of their tool was carried out to answer a series of questions around what domains students most need support in and why, what their attitudes towards existing tools are, what needs they have relating specifically to the university student lifestyle, and what specific features they desire from a tool and why. Recommendations for what an ideal student support tool could look like and specific features it could have are made based on students’ own identified needs and suggestions.