Guinea pig for innovative e-diary

A friend of mine suggested that I should volunteer as a guinea pig in a research project on interactive electronic diaries called Affective Diary. It is a project at the Interaction Lab at Swedish Institute of Computer Science SICS, in cooperation with Microsoft Research. The idea is to develop the concept of diary and add physical experiences and emotions; what the research group refers to as “affective body memorabilia”.

A body sensor captures data from the user such as pulse, movements etc, and uploads it via a cell phone to the electronic diary.

The data is interpreted by the diary software as a Barbapapa figure that changes color and shape according to your emotions. Well, sort of. The diary looks like a cartoon strip where the Barbapapa falls over and gets blue if you are calm, and stands up and becomes red if you are excited. In the diary you can also put SMS and MMS messages, photographs, make notes, etc.

I’m a guinea pig for three weeks. More bulletins on the project’s progress further on.