Emotions aren’t just experienced through thoughts or feelings trapped within our skulls. We experience our emotions through out our entire being. Our mind and body working as one. If we are trying to understand emotions (or affect), this begs the question, can we capture and understand emotions through collecting data using bio-metrics?

In early studies conducted by Sundstörm et al. [2] and Ståhl et al. [1] researchers started to explore new ways to capture emotion through integrating the experience itself. Although the two studies had a specific areas of interest, both were made possible because of participant engagement and the prevalence of mobile devices. In addition to participant engagement, Both studies relied on participant insight and interpretation of collected data in order for researchers to create a final analysis and report.

Sundstörm’s et al. [2] study was more of a communal study which relied on participants communicating with each other through messaging while entrusting “spectators” to aid in data collection. The study itself was awkward as it had participants interacting with a stylus, which was noted that one of the participants compared it to waving a dildo around [x]. Further, because they used gestures to log emotions this became awkward in a public setting and participants found themselves reluctant and self-conscious when trying to use the device [2]. This ultimately impacted data collection and begs the question if the data that was capture was reliable.

The Ståhl et al. [1] took the Sundstörm et al. [2] study one step further and concentrated their efforts into the personal experience. Instead of waving dildo-like objects, participants wore bio-metrics and kept a journal [1]. Through this, Ståhl et al. [1] was able to capture data based on the participant physical experience and their translated emotional experience. The bio-metric data was converted into a data representation were the participant was able to amend journal items to it.

Both studies revealed that its difficult to accurately capture and represent the emotion of an experience. It highlights again that a level of context is required to understand someone’s emotion (affect) and impact it has on someone’s body. This is simply because everyone embodies experiences and emotions differently. What one person finds exhilarating another will find terrifying.

What the Ståhl et al. [1] study revealed is that participants were able to learn and evolve from their personal data as they were the translators of their own body’s language and thoughts. They did note that data presentation may need to be displayed more abstractly, however participants were still able to engage with it on some level [1].

While we may not know how someone processes emotion, we can begin to think about how to develop tools to allow those who want to reflect, evolve, grow or simply learn more about themselves. With the new generation of bio-metrics being incorporated into watches and smart phones, its only a matter of time before we have apps tracking our daily emotional language.

References

[1] Anna Ståhl, Kristina Höök, Martin Svensson, Alex S. Taylor, and Marco Combetto. 2008. Experiencing the Affective Diary. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 13, 5 (June 2008), 365–378. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-008-0202-7

[2] Petra Sundström, Anna Ståhl, and Kristina Höök. 2007. In situ informants exploring an emotional mobile messaging system in their everyday practice. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 65, 4 (April 2007), 388–403. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2006.11.013

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