Quantifying the Emotional Self

Hello, my name is Su Kim. I’m a second year graduate student at NYITP and I focus on creative technology. Today I want to share about my ongoing project on emotional data.

I was always interested in what other people and feeling and in a sense if I can give them a hug, if my close ones are feeling down, even if they don’t express it verbally. So to track the emotion I’ve been tracking myself and see what are the best was to track an emotion.

So I started with my temperature, so these are stress thermometer and I use that for my ears, armpit, temple, different finger points and palms. And I also tracked it with Basis and We-me, and We-Me is for the heartrate and the Basis was for the heartrate and the skin conductance.

So there is a lot of biofeedback out there and they have different sensors and different algorithms and they are just creating more and more.

So just to go back to my data this is my temperature data and these are showing my nine different body points. So you can see the finger is the one that fluctuate the most and more sensitive to detect the mood.

And also this is a screenshot of my Basis and also We-Me showing my different emotion state. And later on all it came down to was that these numbers didn’t really matter so much and neither did the graphs. What really mattered was the part where I wrote down personally of where I went, how I felt, who I saw, and the things that were in my mind, an what was most important is I did not want to share them.

So how can we make a product that can share an emotion and how can we translate with one another. That’s how I created my product Tia.

So Tia is a therapeutic iPhone case. You can give it a hug, you can pet it and while you’re holding it it can detect it with your temperature, your finger temperature and also your heartrate. It also collect inside about your emotions state and you can add your family members and your close network to share this information, and also broadcast your emotional information.

So I thought that this was especially beneficial to people going under depression. I will bring humor and also smiles as possible to give easy communication without words.

To give you a little scenario about Tia that would be a person with a depressed state and they can put inputs like how they’re feeling and then the other person either your mom, your sister, or close friend can see how you’re doing throughout the day, and if you are in a more critical situation they can call for professional help.

You can see your network of friends in one screen and then you can choose the one that needs more love. And you can take it, tickle it, give it a hug, and then send the love back. And the receiver will see that you’re moving and how you show them your love and also bring them a smile hopefully.

So how I do it is putting a sensor in the back of the phone with the motors and giving emotions.

So why cuteness and why cats? There has been research saying there is a power of cute and power of Kawia. Being cute and cute things bring positive emotions to people and it also helps people to focus better. So this would be a way to give positive feelings and also lead them to have the positive emotional state.

And that was my cat here and that is how I got inspiration from. She expresses it in a way that humans doesn’t. she gives me a positive feeling that humans doesn’t in a way, or some verbal communication sometimes misses a lot of things. And the little movements and the little interaction, and it communicates a lot and fills in a lot of missing spots.

So I believe in the future of artificial intelligence and I have no doubt that technology will get there to detect every little mood that we feel. But also I’m concerned about the privacy while we do it. So I think that we also need to take the privacy as a critical issue while we’re developing. And also when the data becomes so sensitive as emotions.

Before getting the technology right I believe that we need the right platform for us to talk about ourselves whether it’s physical and emotional.

Thank you.