CounterStress: Enhancing Stress Coping Planning through Counterfactual Explanations in Personal Informatics

Personal informatics (PI) systems have been utilized to help individuals manage health issues such as stress by leveraging insights from self-tracking data. However, PI users may struggle to develop effective coping strategies because factors influencing stress are often difficult to change in practice, and multiple factors can contribute to stress simultaneously. In this study, we introduce CounterStress, a PI system designed to assist users in identifying contextual changes needed to address high-stress situations. CounterStress employs counterfactual explanations to identify and suggest alternative contextual changes, offering users actionable strategies to achieve a desired state. We conducted both lab-based and field user studies with 12 participants to evaluate the system's usability and applicability, focusing on the benefits of counterfactual-based coping strategies, how users select viable strategies, and their real-world applications. Based on our findings, we discuss design implications for effectively leveraging counterfactuals in PI systems to support users' stress-coping planning.

• Human-centered computing → Ubiquitous and mobile computing design and evaluation methods; User studies.