The Development of Mobile App Adaptify: Enhancing College Students' Cultural Adjustment

Mental health is one of the most important aspects of good health and well-being as a part of sustainable development goals. A particular age group prone to poor well-being is college students, especially newcomer students who experience culture shock. Culture shock occurs due to differences in lifestyle and learning aspects from the previous education for students. Nonetheless, students who experience culture shock need to be supported and guided through student adaptation phases with social support as guidance. To help overcome this issue, institutions and universities must implement media services such as mobile application-based social support to encourage students to overcome culture shock. This research aims to reduce and help newcomer students overcome culture shock in college. The outcome of this research is the development of a mobile application-based social support. As such, the following mobile application will have features to enable newcomer students to share their experiences and perspectives during the adaptation period in college with seniors and experts to get the answers and guidance needed. To understand the issue, this research uses the design thinking process with a qualitative approach. The development of this mobile application carried out through several research and interviews including the primary and secondary research. The primary research is conducted with questionaries and interviews with college students and qualified workers in the counseling field, and secondary research is conducted with literature reviews from existing research. That way, the goals of this research will be able to provide mobile application for student's first aid service and guidance to overcome culture shock.