How might the Student Wellness Center (SWC) best communicate about its work in ways that are accurate, authentic, and appealing to a diverse student body?
The Design Corps Team determined that students wellness needs were not being met because of communication of services, accessibility of language and opportunity, and fast-paced terms.
Therefore, they created the Student Wellness Action Plan (SWAP) Quiz. This fun, accessible quiz highlights resources that students can access and incorporate within their day, and provides students with a moment of reflection to think about their state of well-being at Dartmouth.
The student team also shared additional recommendations for improving inclusive communication of the Center’s services, including using Venn diagrams and QR campaigns.
Project Details
Project Partner: Caitlin Barthelmes, Director of the Student Wellness Center
Project Timeline: 3 terms
The Design Corps team spent the fall and winter researching the existing work that the SWC does, the communication of that work, and the wellness needs of the broader student population.
The team researched the current SWC offerings and how they compare to other university models of strong wellness centers. They explored the digital and physical spaces of the SWC and how the current communication resonated with students through past surveys. The team then crafted a stakeholder map outlining the offices and programs within the SWC, collaborating departments/ administration, and the types of students the SWC has direct contact with, as well as those who are missing.
The team interviewed:
Research about SWC Offerings
Mapping wellness needs of students
The team then conducted surveys and interviews with the broader student body to understand, their perception of campus wellness, their frequency of engagement with SWC offerings, and the ways students currently approach self-care.
From the 22 interviews with SWC staff, interns, and students and over 28 survey responses, the Design Corps team found three major themes to focus on that highlighted why students’ wellness needs were not being met:
Communication of Services: The Student Wellness Center focuses on providing support for students through mindfulness and general wellness programming, sexual violence prevention initiatives, alcohol and substance use education services, and much more. Interviews with students, interns, and peer mental health advocates revealed sentiments about the overwhelming amount of information and resources coming from the SWC. One mental health union member mentioned “always finding something new they didn’t know existed” every time they went on the SWC website. Therefore, while the SWC has a myriad of wellness offerings for students, the student population is unaware of them and struggles to realize how the variety of offerings is connected to the center.
Accessibility of Language & Opportunity: While the SWC works to make its offerings accessible through both in-person and digital formats and mediums, by combing through its website, students feel easily overwhelmed by the abundance of offerings. On top of that, the language the center uses can feel alienating to students because they aren’t coming from a professional or technical background in a wellness program. Students expressed a desire for the center to look beyond availability and into the accessibility of language and information.
Fast-Paced Terms: 10 weeks of the term with high-level courses, extracurricular activities, and campus jobs make it hard for students to form wellness habits and sustain healthy relationships with themselves and others. Students expressed wanting to work on their wellness but want better ways of finding and incorporating these into their fast-paced schedules.
As a solution, The Design Corps, Student Wellness Team, created the Student Wellness Action Plan (SWAP) Quiz. This is similar to an online personality quiz where students are asked to reflect and self-assess the state of their: wellness, general health, mindfulness, social life, community connection, academics, recreational activities, and sense of holistic health.
The SWAP quiz creates recommendations based on where students are in their wellness journey. At the end of the SWAP quiz, students receive a score that aligns with one of four wellness styles: Mindful Minion, Striving Spirit, Growing Guru, and Meditation Master. Each wellness style comes with a description of the wellness type and where they are in their journey, along with a personalized wellness action plan PDF document that recommends activities and resources for students based on their emotional and physical health, and sense of community. Additionally, each group of recommendations is ordered from low to high effort, to lower the barrier of entry for students hoping to engage with wellness step-by-step. The series of recommendations contains clickable links on the PDF, so students can save the document and return it. Each personalized wellness action plan comes in a list and chart view, to meet students’ personal preferences on how information is visually conveyed.
On top of highlighting resources that students can access and incorporate within their day-to-day, the SWAP quiz would also provide students with a moment of reflection to think about their state of well-being at Dartmouth. The quiz ultimately encourages students to remember that these results are not static, but rather the starting point of their wellness journey here at Dartmouth.
Additional Recommendations
The team also offered additional recommendations for the Center to best address all three major student themes. They reimagined how the SWC communicates their overall vision with a Venn diagram illustration detailing the different parts of the Center such as Mindfulness, Wellness Check-Ins, and the Sexual Violence Prevention Program. The Design Corps team learned from students and interns that the Center’s reach often feels complex and abstract. This diagram aims to simplify the SWC’s services into a “big picture” that’s easier to digest. The team designed this sketch as the foundation for a more detailed illustration to be led by the SWC team.
The Design Corps team also suggested that the Student Wellness Center move forward with a QR code campaign to expose students to the idea of holistic wellness. Imbedded into their context, posters would stand in several buildings/offices/centers across campus and invite students to engage with services relating to their physical location. The QR code would take students directly to SWC resources that meet the need(s) expressed on the poster. Students might sit in the Deans Office waiting room and find a poster asking them “Feeling overwhelmed by your transition into college? Scan here!” which leads them to try new exercises through the Healthy Relationships office on how to build meaningful relationships at Dartmouth. Although students may not immediately associate the Deans Office with improving interpersonal skills, this poster challenges students to reimagine what holistic wellness might look like by introducing a point of reflection that they can then discuss with their dean. The Design Corps team also noticed that this poster campaign could work in conjunction with the SWAP quiz since the QR code could easily link students to the quiz to discover their “wellness type.”
Holistic Wellness Venn diagram proposal
QR Code proposal