Rulers to measure emotions

Written by Gijs Huisman on 6/04/2010

Reading others’ emotions by looking at their face is something we do intuitively. Still, sometimes a little bit of help may be appreciated.

Artist/designer Eunah Kim has designed a set of three objects that can help you ‘read’ others’ emotions. Put on the special glasses and look at the rulers to tell how astonished someone is. A transparent sheet in front of the mouth measures happiness. And, my personal favorite, the ‘measure tears for sadness’ eye-drop.

Maybe those studies into facial expression analysis from the 70’s would have been greatly helped by these deceptively simple tools.

(Eunah Kim via Gizmodo)

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There are 4 comments in this article:

  1. 20/05/2010joan say:

    I got a question. Is it out there any software that can measure the facial emotions using your picture or a web cam?

    Thanks and keep it on!!!

  2. 20/05/2010Lars Rengersen say:

    Yes there is, we work together with a company called Noldus.
    They sell software called Facereader, developed by Vicar Vision (http://www.vicarvision.nl/).

    More information about Noldus and Facereader can be found on
    http://www.noldus.com/human-behavior-research/products/facereader
    You can also contact us at SusaGroup so we can introduce you there.

    Regarding measuring facial emotions it is important to take into account that this is a kind of basic emotion assessment. Please do keep in mind that:

    • - It only recognises basic emotions, more subtile emotions are not covered
    • - You need kind of a lab setting due to light requirements (not suitable for in home tests)
    • - Not all faces are recognised very well (especially asian faces are difficult for Facereader)
    • - The results are not always very reliable (but sure very interesting)

    Therefore at SusaGroup we believe in non-verbal self report instruments to measure emotions. We see tools like facereader as supportive instruments.
    In my opinion they are very useful for triggering measures using PrEmo for example.

  3. 21/05/2010joan say:

    thanks very much! Very good stuff… I have seen that nothing is out there for linux and open source… so that’s my next goal. THANKS!

  4. 27/05/2010Lars Rengersen say:

    Well, in that case (if your interested in developing and programming tools yourselves), do take a look at the website of Roberto Valenti (researcher at University of Amsterdam).

    On his website you can download EyeAPI.zip, wich contains (a part of) his software for face reconition. Please send us an e-mail if you develop something new.
    We’re always interested to hear about it an learn.

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