EmoEcho: a tangible interface to convey and communicate emotions

An interactive tangible interface has been developed to capture and communicate emotions between people who are missing and longing for loved ones. EmoEcho measures the wearer’s pulse, touch and movement to provide varying vibration patterns on the partner device. During an informal evaluation of two prototype devices users acknowledged how EmoEcho could help counter the negative feeling of missing someone through the range of haptic feedback offered. In general, we believe, tangible interfaces appear to offer a non-obtrusive means towards interpreting and communicating emotions to others

Tensions of Data-Driven Reflection: A Case Study of Real-Time Emotional Biosensing

Biosensing displays, increasingly enrolled in emotional reflection, promise authoritative insight by presenting users’ emotions as discrete categories. Rather than machines interpreting emotions, we sought to explore an alternative with emotional biosensing displays in which users formed their own interpretations and felt comfortable critiquing the display. So, we designed, implemented, and deployed, as a technology probe, an emotional biosensory display: Ripple is a shirt whose pattern changes color responding to the wearer’s skin conductance, which is associated with excitement. 17 participants wore Ripple over 2 days of daily life. While some participants appreciated the ‘physical connection’ Ripple provided between body and emotion, for others Ripple fostered insecurities about ‘how much’ feeling they had. Despite our design intentions, we found participants rarely questioned the display’s relation to their feelings. Using biopolitics to speculate on Ripple’s surprising authority, we highlight ethical stakes of biosensory representations for sense of self and ways of feeling

What does touch tell us about emotions in touchscreen-based gameplay?

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2012 ACM. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution.Nowadays, more and more people play games on touch-screen mobile phones. This phenomenon raises a very interesting question: does touch behaviour reflect the player’s emotional state? If possible, this would not only be a valuable evaluation indicator for game designers, but also for real-time personalization of the game experience. Psychology studies on acted touch behaviour show the existence of discriminative affective profiles. In this paper, finger-stroke features during gameplay on an iPod were extracted and their discriminative power analysed. Based on touch-behaviour, machine learning algorithms were used to build systems for automatically discriminating between four emotional states (Excited, Relaxed, Frustrated, Bored), two levels of arousal and two levels of valence. The results were very interesting reaching between 69% and 77% of correct discrimination between the four emotional states. Higher results (~89%) were obtained for discriminating between two levels of arousal and two levels of valence

Challenges of designing and developing tangible interfaces for mental well-being

Mental well-being technologies possess many qualities that give them the potential to help people receive assessment and treatment who may otherwise not receive help due to fear of stigma or lack of resources. The combination of advances in sensors, microcontrollers and machine learning is leading to the emergence of dedicated tangible interfaces to monitor and promote positive mental well-being. However, there are key technical, ergonomic and aesthetic challenges to be overcome in order to make these interfaces effective and respond to users’ needs. In this paper, the barriers to develop mental well-being tangible interfaces are discussed by identifying and examining the recent technological challenges machine learning, sensors, microcontrollers and batteries create. User-oriented challenges that face the development of mental well-being technologies are then considered ranging from user engagement during co-design and trials to ethical and privacy concern

Beyond mobile apps: a survey of technologies for mental well-being

Mental health problems are on the rise globally and strain national health systems worldwide. Mental disorders are closely associated with fear of stigma, structural barriers such as financial burden, and lack of available services and resources which often prohibit the delivery of frequent clinical advice and monitoring. Technologies for mental well-being exhibit a range of attractive properties, which facilitate the delivery of state-of-the-art clinical monitoring. This review article provides an overview of traditional techniques followed by their technological alternatives, sensing devices, behaviour changing tools, and feedback interfaces. The challenges presented by these technologies are then discussed with data collection, privacy, and battery life being some of the key issues which need to be carefully considered for the successful deployment of mental health toolkits. Finally, the opportunities this growing research area presents are discussed including the use of portable tangible interfaces combining sensing and feedback technologies. Capitalising on the data these ubiquitous devices can record, state of the art machine learning algorithms can lead to the development of robust clinical decision support tools towards diagnosis and improvement of mental well-being delivery in real-time

Decoding learning: the proof, promise and potential of digital education

With hundreds of millions of pounds spent on digital technology for education every year – from interactive whiteboards to the rise of one–to–one tablet computers – every new technology seems to offer unlimited promise to learning. many sectors have benefitted immensely from harnessing innovative uses of technology. cloud computing, mobile communications and internet applications have changed the way manufacturing, finance, business services, the media and retailers operate. But key questions remain in education: has the range of technologies helped improve learners’ experiences and the standards they achieve? or is this investment just languishing as kit in the cupboard? and what more can decision makers, schools, teachers, parents and the technology industry do to ensure the full potential of innovative technology is exploited? There is no doubt that digital technologies have had a profound impact upon the management of learning. institutions can now recruit, register, monitor, and report on students with a new economy, efficiency, and (sometimes) creativity. yet, evidence of digital technologies producing real transformation in learning and teaching remains elusive. The education sector has invested heavily in digital technology; but this investment has not yet resulted in the radical improvements to learning experiences and educational attainment. in 2011, the Review of Education Capital found that maintained schools spent £487 million on icT equipment and services in 2009-2010. 1 since then, the education system has entered a state of flux with changes to the curriculum, shifts in funding, and increasing school autonomy. While ring-fenced funding for icT equipment and services has since ceased, a survey of 1,317 schools in July 2012 by the british educational suppliers association found they were assigning an increasing amount of their budget to technology. With greater freedom and enthusiasm towards technology in education, schools and teachers have become more discerning and are beginning to demand more evidence to justify their spending and strategies. This is both a challenge and an opportunity as it puts schools in greater charge of their spending and use of technolog

The Design and Evaluation of an Ambient Biofeedback Display

People use non-verbal cues, such as facial expressions, body language and tonal variations in speech, to help communicate emotion; however, these cues are not always available in interactive computer environments. For example, in computer-mediated communication, these cues don’t exist, and in interactive art, it is difficult to convey and represent emotion. Without being able to effectively communicate emotion, we can have difficulty relating to other people, and can lack self-regulation of our own emotional states. In this thesis, we propose to use abstract visual representations of emotion when regular emotion cues either don’t exist or are not appropriate to the medium. Through pilot testing and two user studies, we create abstract visual representations of emotional state and show that the visualizations are naturally interpretable and suitable for at-a-glance understanding. Finally, to demonstrate their utility, we incorporate the visual representations of emotion into a biofeedback task using ambient displays. We show that participants are able to use the visualizations to self-regulate their physiological arousal