Filed under: Gear, Health, Weird Science, Asylum Exclusive
For the introspective, a phone app that tells you when you're stressed out and tracks your emotional state over the course of the week might seem unnecessary. But for more science-minded people who need hard data before coming to a conclusion, a beeping red light that says "Hey, dude, calm down!" can be pretty helpful.
That's the hope that NYU research resident Mustafa Bagdatli had, anyway, when he invented "Poker Face" for his thesis project. A phone app that connects via Bluetooth to sensors in a wristband and on chest pads, Poker Face was created to identify the changes in mood by using heart rate data and storing it on the phone. It also takes pictures with the phone's camera every 10 minutes to create a visual map of what it was that brought you down during the course of your day.
Keep reading to learn more about how Poker Face works, and what Bagdatli thinks the practical application might be.
The color of the screen on the phone changes with the wearer's mood. Bagdatli was his own test subject during the trial period. When his screen went red, he learned how to respond. "You can learn a lot about yourself that way," Bagdatli told Asylum. "It means something is changing, and I learned to identify what's happening to me. If I see a beautiful girl, it might make it really red. I know how to identify what emotion is causing it, and because it makes the phone vibrate, it gives you a sense that you have to stop now."
This is all cool, but is there a practical application for the rest of us to wearing a device that tells you when you're stressed out? Bagdatli thinks so.
"I worked with a psychologist during my thesis," he says. "And I would go to his office and show him my data. That seemed interesting to him, and he started focusing on the data and especially the pictures, which are really effective in seeing what it actually was that triggered my emotional state. This could be really beneficial for people when they go to a psychologist -- they'd actually have field data."
At the very least, Bagdatli has succeeded in inventing a device that makes it harder to be sneaky while checking out a pretty girl on the street.
Hey, at least he didn't un-invent sunglasses while he was at it.