stressOUT: Design, Implementation and Evaluation of a Mouse-based Stress Management Service

Work-related stress has the potential to increase the risk of chronic stress, major depression and other non-communicable diseases. Organizational stress monitoring usually applies long-term self-report instruments that are designed in a retrospective manner, and thus, is obtrusive, time-consuming and, most important, fails to detect and predict short-term episodes of stress. To address this shortcoming, we apply design science research with the goal to design, implement and evaluate a stress management service for knowledge workers (stressOUT) that senses the degree of work-related stress solely based on mouse movements. Using stress theory as justificatory knowledge, we implemented stressOUT that tracks mouse movements and perceived stress levels randomly twice a day with the goal to learn features of mouse movements that are related to stress perceptions. Results of a first longitudinal field study indicate that mouse cursor speed is negatively related to perceived stress. Future work is discussed.