Just Do Something: Comparing Self-proposed and Machine-recommended Stress Interventions among Online Workers with Home Sweet Office

Modern stress management techniques have been shown to be effective, particularly when applied systematically and with the supervision of an instructor. However, online workers usually lack sufficient support from therapists and learning resources to self-manage their stress. To better assist these users, we implemented a browser-based application, Home Sweet Office (HSO), to administer a set of stress micro-interventions which mimic existing therapeutic techniques, including somatic, positive psychology, meta cognitive, and cognitive behavioral categories. In a four-week field study, we compared random and machine-recommended interventions to interventions that were self-proposed by participants in order to investigate effective content and recommendation methods. Our primary findings suggest that both machine-recommended and self-proposed interventions had significantly higher momentary efficacy than random selection, whereas machine-recommended interventions offer more activity diversity compared to self-proposed interventions. We conclude with reflections on these results, discuss features and mechanisms which might improve efficacy, and suggest areas for future work.