Steven Jonas

July 6, 2016

Ellis Bartholomeus has many of the standard self-tracking tools like pedometers, heart rate monitors, and eeg sensors. But she explored a different type of tool when a friend gave her a logbook with a place to record her daily mood by drawing a smiley or frowny face on a colored circle.

Although it initially felt like a silly exercise, she was surprised by how she responded to these faces over time. There was a visceral pleasure to seeing these faces. Even though they were representations of her own emotional state, they seemed to take on a life of their own.

Although Ellis had the day-to-day pleasure of rendering her mood as a cartoon, she couldn’t resist the urge to structure these images to see bigger trends. You’ll see her amusing methods in the video. How do you measure a smiley face? (hint below)