Conferences & Events

Summary: RealityMine and Affectiva at ESOMAR Congress 2012

By September 12, 2012 No Comments

Chris Wallbridge summarizes the paper RealityMine co-presented with Affectiva this week at the ESOMAR Congress 2012 conference in Atlanta…

From Celebrating Research, Creative Solutions – by Chris Wallbridge

Second to speak were Rolfe Swinton from RealityMine and Rana El Kaliouby from Affectiva; “Measuring Emotions Through a Mobile Device Across Borders, Ages, Genders and More”. We were presented with the ‘same old problem’: aren’t emotions important? But we can’t measure them objectively or cost-effectively. Oh dear! And at this point I didn’t hold out much hope for a talk that would open my eyes too much. WRONG CHRIS.

Rolfe and Rana, faced with the ‘same old problem’, have pioneered the development of technology, deployed on a mobile device, that captures data on facial features and their movements whilst respondents watch an ad. They track, as an ad plays in real-time, the different muscle movements and facial expressions participants make.

This data then means something! It is translated into a series of indicators displayed on a dashboard. There are algorithms and global norms, etc., but to sum up for those of you who didn’t see this presentation, and you have missed out by the way no matter how much you like this blog, this actually does represent a cost-effective, accurate and unobtrusive method of measuring and understanding emotion.

What I really admire was the admission that it took seven iterations to get this right, as the best ideas do. Now it is there, it looks brilliant and I applaud the work of the presenters.”

Note from us at RealityMine

We appreciate Chris flagging up the importance of our iterative approach. Given the incredibly fast rate of change in technology and the fact that we are all continuously pushing forward new ideas, tools and approaches, continual testing and learning is key. The good thing is that fast-cycle learning does not mean high cost. Rather it is an effective way to reduce cost and increase the likelihood of great success in launching a new research methodology.