Technology that knows how we feel

Clive Thompson on Gadgets That Know How We Feel:

Beverly Woolf is a computer scientist who studies “intelligent tutoring” — artificial-intelligence teaching software that automatically adapts its lesson to how quickly a student is learning.

She outfitted computers with expression detectors that followed where the students were looking. She installed sensors in the chairs to detect posture and gave the kids wristbands that measured galvanic skin response. If the tutoring software identified that the pupils were checking out, it would offer encouragement or shift to a different or easier problem, just as a human teacher might do.

It worked. The software was 80 percent accurate in sensing the students’ moods—and toward the end of a 15-minute lesson, users were three times more engaged and focused than kids who had been working on regular, unmodified computers.

Smart idea. And why stop there? I think that all of our software and hardware would work better if it understood our moods. We need an emo revolution in high tech.

… Our computers have been robots too long; it’s time they softened up.

Thompson discusses several current research projects that involve computers sensing emotion in order to limit interruptions and improve productivity and safety.

Humans tend to interact with a fluidity and mastery of contextual clues that computers lack. Much of this is due not to intelligence but to emotional awareness. I would argue that learning the art of emotion would best happen in creating responsive, playful technologies. There are few human experiences so dynamic and rich with emotional clues as two or more people playing together. In fact, this blog takes its name from a key play marker that differentiates what might be mistaken for aggression from rough and tumble play. Get play right and an emotionally sensitive spreadsheet is a breeze.

ADDENDUM: On the flip side, consider play technologies generating, evoking, or triggering emotions: How Wii and Kinect Hack Into Your Emotions.