Emotion Visualization
Face to face with emotions
TIMELINE
Sep 2021-Feb 2022
PROJECT TYPE
Interactive Device
What is the purpose of this project?
In such a fast pace of life, people who are busy in cities have no way to deal with their emotions, leading to many mental illnesses. Therefore, I am devoted to helping these people understand their feelings, have a place to see joys and make positive changes. I want them to know that no matter where you are in life, how low you have sunk, and how bleak your situation is, this is not the end of your story.
Contribution
Individual Work
Services
Research, Concept,
Customer journey, Final work
Tools
Processing, C4D, R
''
Background
Emotions are mental states brought on by neurophysiological changes associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or displeasure. There currently needs to be a scientific consensus on a definition. Emotions are often intertwined with mood, temperament, personality, disposition, or creativity.
How do we start generating emotions?
After reading the relevant literature review and combining it with the overview of the causes of emotions by three scholars, I briefly summarized the root causes of human emotions, hoping to be helpful for subsequent research.
How emotions are perceived by humans or machines?
Motivation
In such a fast pace of life, people who are busy in cities have no way to deal with their emotions, leading to many mental illnesses. When I was in college, my roommate was a depressed person. His life was dominated by negative emotions every day, and he could not find a place to relieve his feelings. We tried everything we could to help him, but we failed. He chose to leave this world quietly.
Therefore, I am devoted to helping these people understand their emotions, have a place to see joys and make positive changes. I want them to know that no matter where you are in life, how low you have sunk, and how bleak your situation is, this is not the end of your story.
User Research
After understanding the impact of negative emotions on people's lives in contemporary society, I conducted questionnaires and interviews with people in Nanjing (mainly college students and professionals). Luckily, 627 valid questionnaires and interviews with 26 people from different occupations were collected.
Are people's emotional problems serious nowadays?
Surveys indicate that around 45 percent of people who live in cities have trouble controlling their negative emotions effectively. In this group, victims of depression account for about 56%. More shockingly, two-thirds of those affected are women.
Why can't people overcome their negative emotions?
I try to find out why people cannot vent their negative emotions. Most people consider that there is not enough place and space for venting emotions in cities, and others cannot understand them. Catharsis and distraction can be the best way for them to overcome those emotions.
How do people treat joys and sorrows?
Insights
People in cities bury their sadness in their hearts, have nowhere to cry, and have no friends to share their feelings with. Under the bright appearance of today's prosperous cities, how many urban problems lurk in the shadows?
Ideation
The device's power is that it allows the negative person to face their sadness and joy and accommodates the positive emotions. Positive particles can have a positive effect on harmful particles. When the depressed person was in the device, they could see that their mood was affected by another positive emotion. It's like being healed by a happy story when you're sad.
Sketch
As an essential part of the urban landscape, telephone booths provide a private communication space. I want to transform the existing phone box so that it can make phone calls and provide a space for people to vent their emotions.
In my opinion, annular space gives people a sense of security. Inside, wooden columns and undulating Windows suggest privacy, allowing us to confront our emotions.
Spatial Map
This section evaluates the device by simulating the user's use process. Firstly, users are divided into two categories by joy and sadness, and then their spatial journey and mood changes are recorded.
User Journey Map & Exterior Structure
Customer Journey
To test the project's feasibility, I selected four groups of people, told them the same news, and observed their reactions. When they want to share or vent their emotions, I provide a simple computer version of the emotion Tree hole and record their emotional journey. In addition, I quantified the value of emotions and added colors to feelings based on emotion theory and color wheel theory to facilitate the subsequent experimental design.
Interior Structure
Emotion is like water flow. It fluctuates all the time, and I try to use color and frequency and size of fluctuation to represent the change of emotion.
Technology
After completing the design concept, I used Processing and P5 to realize the process of face feature point grasping, emotion recognition, and visualization.
Concept Development
Emotion Recognition
The emotion recognition part is divided into two steps: Face Detection（detect the position of the face of the image and output the coordinates of the bounding box), Facial Feature Points Capture (capture the facial features such as eyebrows, nose and eyes that can represent emotional values and observe their changes).
Emotion Visualization
The facial emotions are divided into happy, angry, sad, surprised, and scared and assigned emotional values. The dynamic texture curve is given according to the emotional weight of the face. The color and amplitude of the fluctuation represent the mood change.
Critical Code
Final Result
Emotion Recognition
Emotion Visualization
Rendering
Using light and shadow, color, sound effects, environmental settings, and interactive effects, I create an immersive emotional visualization space where people can freely release their emotions and get psychological relief. For the internal environment of the interactive device, the rocking seat, the underside design of the water surface grain, and the beating ripple emotion are adopted. Users can be fully immersed in it and treat themselves.
Timing
Studies have shown that most of our low moods occur at night. Therefore, to save space, this interactive device can be used as a meeting room during the day, where people can relax and talk, and at night it becomes a place for emotional therapy.
Decorations and visualization
People can only hear their inner voice when they are close to nature. In the device's interior, I set the surrounding wall into the shape of a water curtain, and the interior is also paved with rocks and streams. Human emotions are like flowing springs. I use water currents to visualize emotions, waves representing emotional changes, and colors representing types of emotions.
User Feedback
