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Assignment: Midterm Project 1: Group project proposal
Collaborators: ash, Simon Tan
Our idea is to have a "mood cube" that allows one to express their current mood by adjusting the physical orientation of a cube situated on a flat surface. The cube would have one of the basic human emotions (i.e. happiness, sadness, anger, etc.) per side, and the user would orient upwards the side they identified with most at any given time. For example, if the user was feeling happy, she could pick up the cube and place it back down again with the "happiness" side facing upwards. The cube would then change color, reflecting the mood that was registered. If online connectivity was available to the cube, it would also be able to act as an easy status-updating mechanism on "micro-blogging" platforms such as Twitter or Facebook.
This cube would be accompanied by a second "ambient monitor" cube that could act as a status indicator for the moods of people that the user knows. This second cube would monitor up to six individuals' status messages on "micro-blogging" platforms such as Twitter or Facebook, attempting to interpret their emotions based on their writing. Each face of the "ambient monitor" cube could be lighted with different color LEDs, reflecting the moods of different people. To help in identifying the people monitored by the cube, there would be slots on the faces of the cube to allow the user to insert photos. (If more advanced materials could be acquired, perhaps the sides of the cube could digitally display the profile pictures of the people monitored.)
These cubes would be small enough to sit comfortably on a desk without taking up much space. We feel that they would provide for an ambient, unobtrusive way for a user to express moods and monitor the moods of others.
The first "mood-setting" cube would have switches (or buttons) on each face. As the cube is placed flat on a surface, one of the switches would be pressed and a microcontroller could determine which mood was expressed. (That would be the mood represented on the face opposite the side of the cube pressed.) Alternatively, we could use an accelerometer to determine which side was facing upwards at any given time.
The 'ambient monitor' cube would have configurable LEDs on each face, each set mapped to the 'mood' of a friend. Ideally, this would be configurable with a desktop software interface or (Facebook) web application. Slots for photos could be extended on each face for users to mark with the pictures of their friends.
The six faces of the cube would be mapped to the six basic human (culturally neutral) emotions as researched by Ekman, Friesen, and Ellsworth:
Personality theorists seem to disagree on what the "basic" emotions are, so there are many competing sets of emotions we could use. However, since we are working with a cube, we needed to choose a set of exactly six emotions.
Light Detection: There could be light detectors on the faces of the cubes so that they could keep track of night and day (or if the room around them is lit or not during the evening). The "ambient monitor" cube could also reflect remote lighting status on individual faces.
Mood Tracking: Mood updates could be logged so that a user could track their mood as it changes over a certain period. This could be used for fun or even for clinical puposes (i.e. those seeking therapy can use this to track their moods with their counselor).
Average Mood: The "ambient monitor" cube could track more than just six individuals if it became an "average mood indicator", parsing all of one's friends on Facebook/Twitter to calculate a general indicator of how the user's social circle is doing and reflecting that with one color. (To combine this with the original idea, each face could refer to one particular "group" of people that the user wanted to monitor, and the cube could reflect the average moods of each group separately.)
Color Cube: We can represent moods using colors instead of specific expressions. Pro: Users would not be tied to canned moods. Con: Abiguity is introduced with the interpretations of colors. (E.g. does "blue" mean sad or relaxed? Does "red" mean angry or love?)
+/- Scale: Instead of using specified moods, users could just express their mood on a negative-to-neutral-to-positive scale. This could be implemented using something like a mouse scroll wheel where moving the scroll wheel up means feeling more positive and vice-versa.
Wearable Device: A portable device (e.g. a wrist band) that one could adjust wherever she wanted. However, dealing with wireless options would be challenging.
Other Shapes: Other three-dimensional shapes with more faces may give us more flexibility; after all, there are far more than just six emotions.
Mixing Emotions: Some personality theorists believe that all emotions are based on some mix or combination of the basic emotions. If we detect orientation of the cube on a more fine-grained level, we could allow the user to express a broader range of emotions. For example, we could have the cube mounted on a rack with multiple sides generally "facing upwards", and interpret the mix of emotions as a more refined emotion.
Mood Explanation: Perhaps we could introduce an extra device (intentionally ambiguous) that would allow the user to identify the 'reasons' behind the moods expressed. For a more automated solution, we could tie the moods to their Calendar (e.g. Google Calendar) and report on which events may have caused the mood shifts.