Over the past couple of decades, this artificial view of the physical world, known as augmented reality, evolved from a scientist's whim to a part of daily life. Defined as a false view of the world, AR is created by computer-generated images, in real time. From Morton Heilig's "experience theatre" invented in 1962 to augmented reality supermarkets soon to be introduced in China, AR has evolved tremendously throughout the years, fast becoming one of the pillars of modern retail and advertising. Coupled with emotion analytics, it becomes a powerful weapon in the fight for consumers.

Emotions analytics will have a massive impact on how people experience media, business, recreation, relationships, and technology in general. Soon there will be apps for employers to use to analyze the personality of job applicants. Or apps that can help you understand your partner's otherwise unfathomable reactions. Or apps designed for casting agents to choose an actor that is most believable for a particular role. Or apps that suggest music playlists, depending on the user's mood.

FACE TO FACE WITH FACIAL IMAGING

Meet the focus Group 2.0: to a much larger sample than usual (e.g. few hundreds), you send an upcoming ad campaign or a mockup solution. The big difference between the status quo and the future resides in a software module installed on the tester's smartphone or computer that will use the device's camera to decipher the user's facial expressions. This is how facial imaging works in practice. It could change the way visual designs are conceived and tested, making them more likely to succeed as a result. These techniques are based on the work of American psychologist Paul Ekman, who studied emotions and their relation to facial expression. Ekman was the first to work on "micro-expressions" yielding impossible to suppress, authentic reactions. The human face has about 43 facials muscles that produce about 8,000 different combinations. None of theses expressions are voluntary, nor are they dependent on social origin or ethnicity. The muscles react automatically and swiftly – in no more than 10 or 20 milliseconds – to cerebral cortex instructions sent to the facial nerve. Facial Imaging's primary market is advertising. One of emerging solutions in that field, Nviso's technology consists in mapping 143 points on the face, activated by the 43 facial muscles. Altogether, their tiny movements are algorithmically translated into the seven most basic expressions: happiness, surprise, fear, anger, disgust, sadness and neutral, each of them lasting a fraction of a second.

GUESS MY MOOD, MOBILE

Judging by an early prototype developed by Samsung Galaxy S II, a smartphone might soon block its user from posting tweets and status updates, depending on their emotional state. Or, a little emotional state emoticon could appear next to a user's tweet so that their followers can better understand its emotional nuances. The technology behind the emotion-sensing smartphone is surprisingly simple: it infers the user's state of mind from how they use their phone. By analyzing how fast they type, how much the phone shakes, how often they backspace mistakes, and how many special symbols are used, the special Galaxy S II can work out whether its owner is irriated, surprised, happy, sad or disgusted, with an accuracy of 67. percent. Emotion recognition is part of a larger school of computer science called “affective computing.” In essence, it deals with computer software that can measure, interpret, and react to your feelings. This might involve a brain-computer interface, or it might be entirely indirect, as with Samsung’s solution. Affective computing also deals with computer software that is sensitive the user's emotions. Example from the future? Windows detecting that you are tired or angry, and thus making interface widgets larger and easier to click.

WORDS ARE VERY UNNECESSARY 

These mood-analysis techniques are just emerging. The field will be reinforced by other technologies such as vocal intonations analysis deployed by startups like Beyond Verbal. Beyond Verbal is trying analyse people’s moods, attitudes, and emotional characteristics – also known as personalities – in real time, using raw vocal intonations. Beyond Verbal’s software is backed up by 18 years of research. The idea for the solution came from observations of babies and how they are able to figure out exactly what their caretakers feel toward them, despite the fact that they do not understand a single word. That led to the scientific investigation into the physical modulations of air pressures that carry the sounds in our surroundings in the hope of finding the answer. Researchers studied over 60,000 test subjects in at least 26 languages, and their success in extracting, decoding, and measuring human moods, attitudes, and personalities gave birth to what they are calling Emotions Analytics. To demonstrate the potential of this technology, Beyond Verbal has created Moodies, the world’s first and publicly available mood recognition app for the Web. Anyone with a microphone built into their computer can record a 20-second audio clip of their own voice, and the app analyzes the speech for mood, attitude, and personality markers. Results are categorized into primary and secondary moods, the latter usually pertaining to subliminal results. Results can be shared via Facebook, Twitter, or email.

Sources: http://mashable.com; http://www.theguardian.com; http://www.extremetech.com; http://www.digitaltrends.com
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