The Proposal: Basic Research in the Grammar of GSR A. Fleming Seay P&T 5 Minute Madness Fall 2001

The Project Basic Research into Galvanic Skin Response Usefulness as a sensing modality for SAI Long Term Goal: –Develop a grammar for GSR to support

What is Galvanic Skin Response? A measure of the electrical response of the skin as measured by a galvanometer. Changes in relation to the bodies reaction to emotional stimuli Commonly employed in Lie detection

Previous Work with GSR and Computing Affective Computing –Rosalind Picard, MIT Media Lab –Affective Tutor, Toys, Touchables, Tangibles Toys, Quake –Computer Response to User Frustration

My Experience with GSR : A Cautionary Tale The Meditation Chamber, Siggraph 2001 –Three phase relaxation/meditation environment (1) Initial relaxation, (2) progressive muscle relaxation, (3) breathing meditation –Participants hooked up to GSR BVP Respiration

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What’s the plan? Create a set of tasks for a participant to complete while hooked up to a GSR device Design tasks to create salient: –Absorption, Surprise, Confusion, Etc. Examine generated profiles Debrief participants

A simple criticism In my best Phil Ackerman voice… –If all your measuring is change, then how do you differentiate the significance of one spike or dip from another? True, but…

What’s needed? Hardware –Bodymedia, Thought Technologies Task design (VB with robust time stamping) Sensing codebase exists, implemented in C and Java for the Procomp.dll Development of data analysis protocol –Fourier analysis, time series

What Could We Do With It? Arousal Based Customization –Mood/Emotion Assistive Analysis Interuptability Augmentation in Usability Labs