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 analyse how to improve the design of the prototype to better suit the end-users.