Story Sharing and Visualization to Address Working From Home Mental Health

自2019冠状病毒病爆发以来，查塔姆实验室从3月初开始成为所有员工100%在家工作的早期采用者，与许多其他公司一样，通过购买家庭办公必需品，努力改善员工的在家工作状况。但缺少的一点是，在这些普遍艰难的时期，他们的员工能否获得心理健康支持。查塔姆实验室找到我们，提出了一个技术干预的想法，以帮助在家工作的人群培养良好的心理健康。我们组建了一个团队，其中包括技术专家和心理学家，以及奥沙瓦市的大规模部署合作伙伴，以及安大略海岸心理健康科学中心，以开发一种基于聊天机器人的解决方案，允许匿名分享在家工作的挣扎（和成功），以及它可能带来的孤立和挑战。该应用程序收集的数据将用于创建一个可视化系统，使用户可以在数据中“找到自己”，看到其他人分享的故事，并帮助人们感受到团结和社区意识。在家工作并不是一个新概念。在采取应对COVID-19大流行的紧急措施之前，就存在孤立感。然而，在家工作的紧急举措影响了许多可能不适合这种工作形式的工人。在家工作的普遍性和不确定性引发了人们对加拿大各地员工长期心理健康影响的质疑。我们提出的解决办法将有助于利用健全的心理学原则和技术以预防性的方式解决这些问题。安大略理工大学将通过信息分析可视化实验室提供设计和软件开发专业知识，该实验室专门从事根据用户需求量身定制的高度交互式自然语言应用程序的开发，以及分析和理解文本数据的接口设计。数字时代的心理健康实验室将为该项目的心理健康方面提供专业知识，包括开发聊天机器人脚本，提供外部资源链接，以及设计评估方法以了解应用程序的功效。

Since COVID started, Chatham Labs was an early adopter of 100% work from home for all staff beginning in early March, and like many other companies, has worked to improve the WFH situation of their employees by purchasing home office essentials. But one missing piece is access to mental health support for their workforce during these universally trying times. Chatham Labs has approached us with an idea for a technological intervention to help foster sound mental health within a work from home population. We have assembled a team that includes technologists and psychologists, as well as large-scale deployment partners in the city of Oshawa, and the Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Science to develop a chatbot-based solution to allow anonymous sharing of the struggles (and triumphs) of working from home and the isolation and challenges it can present. The data collected by the app will be used to create a visualization system to allow users to "find themself" in the data, to see the stories shared by others and help people feel a sense of solidarity and community. Working from home is not a new concept. Feelings of isolation existed before the emergency measures to address the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the emergency move to work from home has affected many workers who may not be suited to that form of work. The widespread and indefinite nature of the work from home situation has raises questions about the long term mental health impacts for employees across Canada. Our proposed solution will help to address these problems in a prophylactic manner using sound psychological principles and technology. Ontario Tech University will provide design and software development expertise through the Visualization for Information Analysis Lab, which specializes in the development of highly interactive natural language applications tailored to user needs, and the design of interfaces to analyze and understand text data. The Mental Health in the Digital Age lab will provide expertise in the mental health aspects of the project, including the development of the chatbot script, the provision of links to external resources, and the design of evaluation methods to understand app efficacy.