New Smartphone Software Predicts Users’ Mood
Article from abcnews.go.com by Jon M. Chang
The smartphone could end up moonlighting as a mood ring in addition to its job as a computer. MoodSense, a new software package in development by Microsoft Research and Rice University in Texas, doesn’t rely on a camera to capture your smile or a microphone to hear you scream in anger. Instead, it predicts moods from what you do with your phone.
Lin Zhong, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice, saw mood as an important factor in how people interact with one another. “For example, when we deal with a spouse, it’s very important to gauge [his or her] mood to make sure you have a smooth relationship,” he told ABC News.
But asking someone about their mood or even saying how you feel out loud could be considered intrusive and even rude. “It’s become a little obnoxious to tell people [on Facebook or Skype] whether you’re feeling great or sad,” said Zhong. “If a computer can do it automatically, it’s a more socially acceptable way to share your mood.”
Zhong and graduate student Robert LiKamWa developed MoodSense to track how smartphone users spend their time across different activities such as email, websites and phone calls. Every couple of hours, the software asks users to rate both their happiness and their activity level on a scale of 1 to 5. Eventually, MoodSense gathers enough data to predict how users feel according to their recent activity. After the orientation period, the researchers said MoodSense could predict a person’s mood with 93 percent accuracy.
