The DASS consortium is proud to finally share with the youth of Europe the last result of the project: The mobile app “Mind Yourself”.
The app was developed by the Italian app developer coordinated by CEIPES. The app opens with a brief introduction guideline told by the app mascotte, a small cartoon peacock designed by a young Italian cartoonist. Then, the peacock guides users to the different sections of the app:
The information section gathers all the definitions useful for deeply understanding the meaning of the exercises, young people can find definitions for psychological and emotional status, causes of stress and its consequences, changes in psychophysical balance, etc. all written in a simple and direct language.
Motivational sentences divided per topic as mental health or healthy lifestyle, run on the home page to better encourage young people’s involvement.
Finally, the Creative Activities section contains 3 different types of activities: creative activity exercises thought to engage users through artistic and creative activities to explore their emotions; video tutorials on dance and movement to learn new techniques to cope with stress; and audio-guided meditation to focus on inner space. All the contents were created by the specialists of the partner organizations as the video tutorials were recorded by the choreographer and art therapist from Essevesse, the information part was written by the expert of Diversity Hub, the creative exercises from active youth and the audio guided meditation from CEIPES.
After the testing phase of the first version of the app, made with more than 70 young people from the partner countries, CEIPES analyzed the results of the feedback questionnaires from which emerged that most of the young people found the app easy to use, its navigation intuitive, and the directions given throughout the app clear and useful. They really appreciated the layout, its graphics, and how the contents are conveyed. Consequentially, and accordingly with the consortium, partners suggested the last updates to be done on the app in order to remove bugs and make the app more effective.
Today the app is ready to be used individually by each European young person who wants to learn how to cope with stress without the help of a youth worker, and through arts. The app is available in all the languages of the partnership (English, French, Italian, Greek, Polish, and Lithuanian) and video tutorials and audio-guided meditation are dubbed in these languages.