HappyRec: Evaluation of a "Happy Spot" Recommendation System Aimed at Improving Mental Well-Being

In recent years, the number of people with depression has increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the activities which has been found to help in improving mental well-being and reducing stress is an exercise called the "three good things". In this exercise, participants are asked to write down and reflect on three good things that happened to them each day every night before they sleep. However, for the people who suffer from conditions such as low self-esteem and depression, it is not easy for them to be aware of good things or small moments of happiness in their daily lives. To address this issue, we propose a happiness spot recommendation system to provide suggestions for nearby spots which might improve their positive affect using Google Maps. To verify the validity of our proposed method, we asked nine subjects to evaluate the proposed system and reported the happiness ranking accuracy of the recommended spots.