December 12, 2008

http://harvardmagazine.com/breaking-news/where-decisionmaking-is-measured

“the split second in which a decision occurs gives rise to a thousand questions. Why did a person decide the way he did? Was the decision impulsive or deliberative? What was the person feeling when she made that decision? How much did the person’s immediate surroundings influence the decision?

The moment of decision has proven an elusive object of study, partly because it happens so quickly. Although researchers can ask subjects after the fact what was going through their minds, those results are vulnerable to bias (for instance, a study subject saying what she thinks the researcher wants to hear). But a new lab at the Harvard Kennedy School enables researchers to zoom in on that critical moment. Using state-of-the-art technology, the Decision Science Laboratory tracks measures of arousal that enable researchers to get at participants’ states of mind—in the seconds before, during, and after each decision, was a participant calm, angry, happy, or anxious?”

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1478214

By Ryan Singel
September 15, 2009 | 4:50pm
Categories: Crowdsourcing

The morning’s most interesting launch came from facial-expression-identifying company, Affective Interfaces, which charges advertisers, marketers and filmmakers for visual samples of hundreds of internet users who agree to be monitored via webcam.

Epicenter Article

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

Even more interesting will be linking this type of technology to evolutionary algorithms, but that deserves its own post. Needless to say, finding a way to not only monitor but engage with our emotions in an immediate way could create some of the most effective media yet to be experienced, and also the most seductively terrifying.

Link to the blog

Also at the event this morning, two startups showed off technology that turn standard metrics on their head. Affective Interfaces uses its motion-sensing technology and a web camera to analyze people’s facial expressions and measure their emotions. The software-as-a-service solution yields data that can be used for market research to determine how people feel about products, web sites or commercials. During the demo, Affective Interfaces’ technology measured the happiness of Digg’s Kevin Rose, a judge on the panel, on a graph by analyzing a pre-recorded video of Rose smiling and frowning backstage at the conference.

http://is.gd/3qUzq

By Joanna Stern on September 16, 2009 at 7:20 AM

"You don’t know me, webcam! You think you can just see my face and read my emotions!? Yea, that is gonna be the fight I have with my webcam if Affective Interfaces ever releases its emotion sensing software."

Gizmodo Article

Mark Hachman on Tuesday September 15, 2009

Affective Interfaces was probably the coolest startup in the group…

Appscout Article

By Alex Wilhelm on September 15, 2009

…The business model here is sort of brilliant. It basically allows for some massive outsourcing of focus groups. You can form a group of people from anywhere so long as they have the software installed and any webcam. I’d invest.

TechGeist article

Sep 18, 2009
The Magic of Facial Cues
Author: ResearchTalk | Filed under: Emotions, Future of research, Innovation

Affective Interfaces is keen to reach out to potential partners, customers and funders (they’re self-funded). We regard them as an exciting addition to the world of new research and so encourage you to engage with them (as you’ll hear in the podcast they’ve already had a good amount of interest from the event).

VCs and corporate M&A folk: this could become a very special company.”

http://is.gd/3qT9J