Affective keys: towards unobtrusive stress sensing of smartphone users

This work explores the use of pressure-sensing to capture cues of the stress of smartphone users while typing. In a controlled laboratory study, 11 participants were asked to write about a recent stressful and relaxing experience in counterbalanced order. Preliminary results show a significant positive correlation between the increase in typing pressure and self-reported stress across the two conditions (r=0.75, p=0.0081). In addition, we observed a significant negative correlation between the typing pressure baseline and the self-reported stress (r=-0.74, p=0.0093). These findings can help inform the development of less invasive methods for stress measurement.