Glasgow Caledonian University

The eMotion Laboratory is a unique facility, developed to capture the subtle palettes of human emotion. Typical beneficiaries of our work include leisure-based software developers, game-based education instructors, those building emotionally contingent business applications, and health technology professionals.

Whereas other laboratories will typically apply body sensors to identify physiological measures of arousal, we have found such data collection can impact heavily upon the user experience. In a bid to maintain ecological validity, we have developed a number of in-house products that allow us to monitor arousal levels and identify elicited emotions without intruding upon the user experience.

When evaluating the emotional impact of video games we record a number of measures during the player interaction.

Observation lounge
The observation lounge is purpose built to reflect a classic living room. The room contains typical furnishings, but also remote control cameras to capture user behavior and facial expressions during evaluation sessions. The video data is digitized in real-time, and observed behaviors are annotated to the timeline using The Observer Video-Pro.

Using unique, in-house developed hardware and software solutions, the laboratory provides both academics and outside organizations the tools to capture subtle palettes of human emotion without intrusion upon the user experience.

Gamepad
Currently two measures are collected from the gamepad. Accelerometers record gamepad motion during play, and the gamepad buttons provide data regarding the pressure applied during play. Our published studies have shown that such data can indicate points of player arousal. The data is recorded using our XEmotion Recorder, and then stored within The Observer Video-Pro compatible files. This allows us to annotate video captured during evaluation sessions with arousal level indicators. We then simply analyze the peak arousal points in The Observer, and apply Ekman's Facial Action Coding System (FACS) to determine the elicited emotion.

Close-up of the user interaction with the gamepad. Inset: XEmotion Recorder software.

Eye Tracking
Our remote eye tracking hardware (Tobii x50) allows us to record both the fixation point of the user's gaze and pupil dilation. Pupil dilation, like the button pressure and accelerometer data, is recorded and imported into The Observer Video-Pro to provide a further indicator of arousal.

As our participant plays a video game we record his eye movements, pupil dilation, and gamepad usage to determine arousal levels without intrusion upon the play experience. Results are imported into The Observer Video-Pro, allowing us to annotate the video time-line with arousal peaks. Left: Participant using the gamepad. Right: Remote eye tracking hardware below the computer screen.

The eMotion Laboratory is perfectly placed to support the development of affective software, where user emotions are intrinsic to the application's success. Such examples include experience dependant video-game development, high stress decision support systems, education tools, and applications to support engagement with our health.

eMotion Laboratory
Glasgow Caledonian University
Cowcaddens Road
Glasgow, G4 0BA
United Kingdom