Advances in ubiquitous and wearable sensing and HCI research have made stress monitoring increasingly accessible, enabling the development of personalized stress management technologies. Yet, stress is a subjective and contextual experience, making effective intervention design challenging. Prior studies often isolate stress detection or intervention, without providing an integrated view of how these components connect and are evaluated in real-world use. To address this gap, we conducted a systematic review of 2,152 papers and selected 52 empirical studies where stress tracking informed interventions. Using a framework based on three stress constructs (subjective stress, psycho-physiological stress, and exposure stress), we analyzed how definitions of stress shape detection indicators, intervention design and timing, and evaluation methods. We show that stress conceptualization strongly influences system design, and we propose a conceptual framework linking detection, intervention, and evaluation to guide future user-centered stress management technologies.

The growing demand for mental health support has highlighted the limitations of traditional counseling accessibility, increasing the usage of digital mental health interventions. There has been a rising interest in using robots to support mental health due to their benefits in engagement and rapport. Capitalizing on the opportunity of placemaking for designing a feasible robotic digital mental health intervention, our study explores the Robot Counseling Center (RCC) and its robotic counselor, Cumpa, designed to improve mental health accessibility and user engagement. A two-week field study with 20 participants evaluated RCC's impact on their mental health, engagement, and sense of place within a counseling environment. Results indicate that RCC positively influences emotional awareness and engagement. Our findings provide insights into the role of social robots in mental health interventions and offer design implications for developing robotic counseling centers as supportive, effective spaces, contributing to building better places and interactive systems.

Significant investment of time and effort for language learning has prompted a growing interest in microlearning. While microlearning requires frequent participation in 3-to-10-minute learning sessions, the recent widespread of smart speakers in homes presents an opportunity to expand learning opportunities by proactively providing microlearning in daily life. However, such proactive provision can distract users. Despite the extensive research on proactive smart speakers and their opportune moments for proactive interactions, our understanding of opportune moments for more-than-one-minute interactions remains limited. This study aims to understand user perceptions and opportune moments for more-than-one-minute microlearning using proactive smart speakers at home. We first developed a proactive microlearning service through six pilot studies (n=29), and then conducted a three-week field study (n=28). We identified the key contextual factors relevant to opportune moments for microlearning of various durations, and discussed the design implications for proactive conversational microlearning services at home.

People with mental health issues often stay indoors, reducing their outdoor activities. This situation emphasizes the need for self-tracking technology in homes for mental health research, offering insights into their daily lives and potentially improving care. This study leverages a multimodal smart speaker to design a proactive self-tracking research system that delivers mental health surveys using an experience sampling method (ESM). Our system determines ESM delivery timing by detecting user context transitions and allowing users to answer surveys through voice dialogues or touch interactions. Furthermore, we explored the user experience of a proactive self-tracking system by conducting a four-week field study (n=20). Our results show that context transition-based ESM delivery can increase user compliance. Participants preferred touch interactions to voice commands, and the modality selection varied depending on the user’s immediate activity context. We explored the design implications for home-based, context-aware self-tracking with multimodal speakers, focusing on practical applications.

One of the reasons that people with visual impairments have difficulties in enjoying artworks is the limited number of accessible artworks. To enable people with visual impairments to explore and understand various artworks independently, we built a touchscreen-based mobile application as a prototype focusing on 2D paintings which plays object-level verbal descriptions upon users' touch. To confirm the needs and to collect initial feedback from potential users of such a system, we conducted an exploratory study with 8 participants with visual impairments using the prototype as a design probe. Overall, participants appreciated the prototype as they can learn artworks with less physical and time constraints while listening for details of contents as they explore each painting by touch.