A lot happened since the first Pebble came out in 2013. At that time, there was a futuristic novelty in checking e-mails and incoming calls on your wrist. Since then, smartwatches have developed more or less the same set of familiar functionalities: notifications, sports-, health- and sleep-tracking, voice recognition and remote control.

By now, it may seem as if we’ve exploited the full potential of the technology. Except…

There is one more thing.

To examine what it is, first let’s take a look at a modern smartwatch.

The Microsoft Band 2 was released in 2015, with a handful of improvements compared to its previous version. Inside what looks like a basic sports band with a bulky rubber look, lies an unprecedentedly rich set of features.

More sensors

The Band 2 boasts an impressive number of sensors. In fact, there are so many of them, that - mysteriously - even the official website doesn’t list them all, and most of them aren’t even used by the official Health app — but they are all there, and they can be accessed through the SDK. Here’s the full (secret!) list:

accelerometer

gyrometer

barometer

pedometer

microphone

GPS

GSR (galvanic skin response) sensor

ambient light sensor

UV sensor

skin temperature

heart rate

RR interval

A lot of things there. If you get the feeling that it’s more of a showcase than a practical list, you’re probably right. Microsoft’s attitude seems like this:

Are you a developer?

Here you go, all the sensors we’ve got. Use them for whatever you’d like.

Analyzing emotions

So let’s see if we can use the sensors to detect emotions. The scientific literature tells us that it’s possible to infer mental states from biophysiological measures. When doing so, scientists usually record 3 things in the lab:

EEG (brainwaves),

GSR (skin conductance) and

heart signal data.

These signals allow for calculating excitement, vigilance, approach and engagement — psychological terms for 4 distinct mental states. It has to be noted about the Microsoft Band 2 that this is the first commercially available smartwatch that provides the necessary data to do similar analysis on. GSR, skin temperature, heart rate and RR interval are all valuable in inferring about emotional states — although not all of the data is good quality yet.

Where can we take this? The popularity of the Band already gives exciting options. We could write software that measures the emotions of groups of people. No lab equipment. All that’s needed is a Microsoft Band 2.

How is this useful? Well, as a first idea, it becomes possible to analyze emo-tions of people while watching videos, and assess the videos automatically.

Not impressed by Batman.

The premise of this is that you cannot fake how engaged you are, for example. Your heartbeats become more regular when you are. This is already a metric that can be measured precisely with the Band, second-by-second.

To make it interesting (and test the idea with a real group of people), we’ve created Emotionalyze, a proof-of-concept Android app. It uses the Band to measure engagement and heart rate during a YouTube video, shows the average curves and lists top videos. A short demo video explains it below.

So far, hundreds of people have tried the app, recording their own emotions and observing how people around the world react to different videos. The database that powers this is full of scientific measurements, which - with further analysis - allows for more metrics to be developed.

The future

This application in its current form is a toy that lets you play with science. But the technology behind it is a peek into the future. As smartwatch technology advances, lab-grade measurements become possible. The result? The five star scale becomes a thing of the past. Rating becomes effortless, and quality content is delivered more tailored than ever before.