Understanding How Group Workers Reflect on Organizational Stress with a Shared, Anonymous Heart Rate Variability Data Visualization

ABSTRACT For a small group of office workers who share the same workspace and the task load, leveraging their social skills and awareness could further increase their mutual awareness of each other’s work-related stress. This paper presents a case study of a one-week deployment of a shared, anonymous heart rate variability (HRV) data visualization system at six workplaces with 24 office workers, who were closely collaborated in four-person groups. We collected stress-related physiology data (i.e., heart-rate variability) from wearable sensors and anonymously visualized them on a shared display. Although the physiological data collection where noisy due to the practical constraints in the field settings, we found the participants still increasingly agreed with the systems and used the visualization as a reference for their subjective stress assessment. We also present and discuss how groups of office workers individually and socially reflect on their one-week experiences and then summarize takeaways for designing shared physiological data visualization systems for group stress management in the long term.