Burnout and other mental health issues among teenagers, young adults and even children are increasing steadily, yet, schools and universities often lack the infrastructure to provide help for those in need.
In this project I created a website with resources for students at Folkwang University and University Duisburg-Essen (Uni DuE). It provides basic information on how burnout looks specifically for students (opposed to people already in the workforce), preventative measures, and collective resources for those in an acute mental health crisis.
The website is split into three sections, the structure and design are kept to a minimum to avoid being to overwhelming incase the user is already at their limit.
The first section provides information about burnout and specifically how it manifests itself in young adults, the different kinds of stigma surrounding it and more age/lifestyle-appropriate information regarding insurance, etc. There is always a very basic and a more detailed text describing the most important facts.
The second section contains various options for selfhelp measures. It is split into three categories that list activities for different preferences (auditive, visual, active). This categorization is based on different perceptive tendencies, some prefer acoustic, others visual activities to get their mind off of things. The active category contains ideas for things that demand active engagement, such as exercise, art, meditation, hiking routs in the area, etc.
The page’s third section links to different websites, numbers and addresses to find professional help and guidance. This, again, is categorized into different options: offers from the University DuE, hotlines, online chatrooms, search engines for doctors and therapists in the area and some reading recommendations on the topic of burnout and mental health.
In order to promote the website to students, bags and postcards would be handed out during “Freshers Week”. Although there was feedback from the university that this could be "demotivating", I believe that over-motivated first-year students in particular should know where they can find help if their studies turn out harder than expected (which is often the case. The entire first half of the thesis illustrates reasons for the increasing health crisis among students).
Overall, the website design is simple and calming to ensure that it can be navigated easily; to add elements of interest, I worked with the variable font Aktiv Grotesk that 'translates' user interaction with the site into animation, e.g. headlines being 'stretched' when opening information on mobile // the same headlines being 'extended' on desktop; the eyes on the landing page follow the cursor.
