Design to reduce Stress; How to design a product for stress control?

Stress is an inevitable phenomenon that one may experience in all situations during his life. Although experiencing stress seems undesirable, but in fact, the changes that occur in humans due to stress, increase the mental and physical abilities of an individual to cope with threatening changes. Much research has been done on stress and its effects on humans; various theories have been proposed to study this multifaceted issue; but despite numerous articles examining stress from a psychological perspective, almost no scientific research has provided solutions or guidelines to design products for dealing with stress properly. Accordingly, the main purpose of this study is to examine the basic concepts related to stress from a design perspective and explore the features that have the potential to be employed in the design of products to reduce stress. Therefore, terms such as fight/flight response, Lazarus - Folkman transactional model of stress and coping, and separated concepts of desirable and undesirable stress have been studied as the basic and applied concepts related to stress. Finally, a design model entitled “Design to Relieve Stress”, was proposed in the form of three strategies along with related examples, that can be employed in designing products aiming to reduce stress. In future research, using the solutions presented in this article, products can be designed to reduce users’ stress, so their effectiveness in dealing with various types of stress can be examined to take effective steps to reduce its harmful effects and to improve people's mental health.