Defuzz
The drastic changes and need to adapt from the past two years have increased mental health challenges in college students. This age range is vital in aiding students to achieve what they intend as they prepare to enter their community workforce. Defuzz’s mission is to help users create healthy habits in relaxing and fun ways that will become integrated into their lives. Defuzz’s product is a card deck that involves activities, mindful practices, and artistic expression designed to encourage users to pause and redirect their attention to be present with themselves in order to improve well-being. Key features of each card include a time frame and energy level for the activity to aid in time management and what the user is feeling at the moment. Keep your mind aligned in stressful times with Defuzz.
The UWM DVC Healthy Cities Project includes an entire semester of work developing a product geared toward a target audience in the Milwaukee Community in order to relieve community pain points.
The start of this project involved a research portion regarding the creation of infographics, developing personas resembling the target audience, prototyping products, creating a commercial, and developing brand guidelines. At the end of the semester, the products were pitched to a panel of judges as well as a showcase.
In my journey throughout this project, I looked into mental health in college students and the importance of productive brain breaks instead of being on technology. From personal experience in the troubling last two years, having virtual classes and navigating that space became difficult. I realized the amount of screen time and endless scrolling done as we all spent more times in our homes. As we enter a somewhat normal future, I see the habits on spending time on screen in between work or classes and understand the importance of a more mindful approach to how we utilize our time, especially as students.
I developed the brand Defuzz, a mindful activity card deck that has timed activities and energy levels that range from active, creative, and mindful categories. The final deliverables are meant to be fun and playful to engage the target audience as well as bring joy to the users as they take productive breaks.
