New Objective Metrics Research lab at Harvard
Where Decisionmaking Is Measured
December 12, 2008
http://harvardmagazine.com/breaking-news/where-decisionmaking-is-measured
“the split second in which a decision occurs gives rise to a thousand questions. Why did a person decide the way he did? Was the decision impulsive or deliberative? What was the person feeling when she made that decision? How much did the person’s immediate surroundings influence the decision?
The moment of decision has proven an elusive object of study, partly because it happens so quickly. Although researchers can ask subjects after the fact what was going through their minds, those results are vulnerable to bias (for instance, a study subject saying what she thinks the researcher wants to hear). But a new lab at the Harvard Kennedy School enables researchers to zoom in on that critical moment. Using state-of-the-art technology, the Decision Science Laboratory tracks measures of arousal that enable researchers to get at participants’ states of mind—in the seconds before, during, and after each decision, was a participant calm, angry, happy, or anxious?”
Americans Reject Tailored Advertising and Three Activities that Enable It
U Penn and Cal recommend transparency and informed consent in Behavioral Targeting.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1478214
Horror film producer turns to MRIs to get bigger scares
http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/patterson/57360/horror-film-producer-turns-to-mris-to-get-bigger-scares
EPICENTER
By Ryan Singel 
September 15, 2009 | 4:50pm
Categories: Crowdsourcing
The morning’s most interesting launch came from facial-expression-identifying company, Affective Interfaces, which charges advertisers, marketers and filmmakers for visual samples of hundreds of internet users who agree to be monitored via webcam.
Benjamin Sax
BENJAMIN SAX Affective Interfaces and Emotional Machines
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009
Even more interesting will be linking this type of technology to evolutionary algorithms, but that deserves its own post. Needless to say, finding a way to not only monitor but engage with our emotions in an immediate way could create some of the most effective media yet to be experienced, and also the most seductively terrifying.
GIGAOM
GIGAOM: AIM Bets on Social Networks as Startups Reveal a New Spin on Metrics
Also at the event this morning, two startups showed off technology that turn standard metrics on their head. Affective Interfaces uses its motion-sensing technology and a web camera to analyze people’s facial expressions and measure their emotions. The software-as-a-service solution yields data that can be used for market research to determine how people feel about products, web sites or commercials. During the demo, Affective Interfaces’ technology measured the happiness of Digg’s Kevin Rose, a judge on the panel, on a graph by analyzing a pre-recorded video of Rose smiling and frowning backstage at the conference.
Gizmodo
GIZMODO: Affective Interfaces’ Webcam Software Reads Emotions
By Joanna Stern on September 16, 2009 at 7:20 AM
"You don’t know me, webcam! You think you can just see my face and read my emotions!? Yea, that is gonna be the fight I have with my webcam if Affective Interfaces ever releases its emotion sensing software."
Appscout
APPSCOUT: TechCrunch50: Business Apps on Parade (and Emotion Sensing!)
Mark Hachman on Tuesday September 15, 2009
Affective Interfaces was probably the coolest startup in the group…
Appscout Article
TECHGEIST
TECHGEIST: Affective Interfaces Will Be The New Way To Do Focus Groups #tc50
By Alex Wilhelm on September 15, 2009
…The business model here is sort of brilliant. It basically allows for some massive outsourcing of focus groups. You can form a group of people from anywhere so long as they have the software installed and any webcam. I’d invest.
Podcast Interview by ResearchTalk
PODCAST INTERVIEW BY RESEARCHTALK: AI interviewed on ResearchTalk
Conquest Research’s David Penn
Surinder Siama (podcast and article after the jump).
Sep 18, 2009
The Magic of Facial Cues
Author: ResearchTalk | Filed under: Emotions, Future of research, Innovation
Affective Interfaces is keen to reach out to potential partners, customers and funders (they’re self-funded). We regard them as an exciting addition to the world of new research and so encourage you to engage with them (as you’ll hear in the podcast they’ve already had a good amount of interest from the event).
VCs and corporate M&A folk: this could become a very special company.”
Vino Diaries
AI’s CEO Jai Haissman interviewed by BuzzLogic’s Valerie Combs, VP Corporate Communications. Video after the jump (7min).
September 23, 2009
"We’re certainly at a point in the advertising industry where new models are desperately needed. Clicks are just not really cutting it in terms of a direct response mechanism, so understanding what’s behind like your technology promises to do is really interesting."
PCMAG.com
PCMAG.com: TechCrunch50: Business Apps on Parade
By Mark Hachman on September 15, 2009
"Affective Interfaces was probably the coolest startup in the group. The firm manufactures emotion recognition systems, recording emotional states using Webcams. It’s similar to “Lie to Me,” the Fox show that uses an investigator with an uncanny knack to sense if people are lying by noting their facial expressions.
Measuring the emotional reaction to a product is an untapped market, according to Jai Haissman, the founder and chief executive. The company gathers emotional reactions to a product or piece of media. The research subjects download the software tool, which syncs the Webcam with the media as it plays back on the screen. The company then analyzes the data and provides a graph of the emotional reaction over time. The data can be broken down by demographics, age, gender, et cetera.
Haissman said that the company can build a Skype tool (I’m not clear on whether it has one or not) and take snapshots of the emotional reaction over the day. Affective is releasing an API, which is entering beta today.."
Fib expert tells the truth about “Lie to Me”
Deception / Truthfulness indicators offer not so much a perfect indicator of deception as a flag for where to inquire more deeply. Emotions that are hidden often come out in the form of “leakage” showing when someone is trying to hide a feeling, but that doesn’t tell us what they are thinking, or whether they are lying, just that they’re not wanting their feeling known. But why? That is where the art and science of interrogation comes in.
VENTUREBEAT
VENTUREBEAT: TC50: Affective Interfaces detects whether your ad makes people happy
By Anthony Ha on September 15, 2009
"Affective Interfaces demonstrated some cool new technology today that uses emotion sensing software with webcam footage. The company launched today at the TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco.
Affective’s software detects how people are feeling. But Affective Interfaces isn’t about checking in on how Mom’s doing. The startup is launching its software as a tool for ad companies to test the effectiveness of ads and other content. It sounds like there’s big potential here for even more widespread use.
Chief executive Jai Hassman says that when it comes to advertising or other content, it can be hard to predict how people will react emotionally. Focus groups are a common way to test that, but that’s just a small group of people. Getting quantitative data about the emotions of larger groups is still "in the stone age," Hassman says.
Affective Interfaces can take content from its clients, play it for hundreds or thousands of people (currently, recruited either via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing system or through the company’s market research partners), then deliver numerical data about how those people felt throughout the video. Affective can create webcam montages of many users’ faces at once, giving advertisers and publishers an overall picture of how people are reacting to each part of the content.
Beyond ad research, Affective Interfaces says it could become a social tool, as well as a way to detect drowsiness when people are driving."
Two judges choose AI as their favorite startup at TC50.
Tim O’Reilly chooses Affective Interfaces as his favorite startup from TC50. Video after the jump. “I like things that take a hard problem and in some ways advance the state of the art. I’m also a sucker for things that are on a big trend… They are looking at where technology is going.” -> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/15/tc50-backstage-well-tell-us-how-you-really-feel-tim-oreilly/
Bradley Horowitx (VP Product Google at 3m 56s) Video after the jump. Answering “Who was your favorite startup at TC50?”, “…Affective Interfaces…. Understanding emotional response with computers is a rich area.” -> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/15/tc50-backstage-what-exactly-does-bradley-horowitz-do-at-google/
What People Are Saying
TC50 panelist Tim O’Reilly in his post interview with Sarah Lacy: ”I like things that take a hard problem and in some ways advance the state of the art. I’m also a sucker for things that are on a big trend… They are looking at where technology is going.” -Tim O’Reilly (at 1:30)
Bradley Horowitz (VP Product Google at 3m 56s) Video after the jump. Answering Sarah Lacy’s question “Who was your favorite startup at TC50?”, “…Affective Interfaces…. Understanding emotional response with computers is a rich area.” -Bradley Horowitz (Google VP Product) (at 3:58) video after the jump
Tim OReilly, TC50 panel “(Affective Interfaces) is the first one I’ve seen that actually seems like a business. A couple of businesses actually…” (at 7:15) video after the jump
Kevin Rose, TC50 panel: “I thought it was awesome. I think that for focus groups or market research for entertainment like Jason mentioned for commercials I think this is going to be huge.” (7:38) video after the jump
“This isn’t just cool technology, this is radically cool technology.” -Brian Singerman, Founder’s Fund
“Affective Interfaces demo of @KevinRose facial expressions is awesome. It analyzes facial expressions for moods.” Don Dodge, Director of Business Development for Microsoft’s Emerging Business Team
“We need reliable qualitative audience metrics. This technology is a nuclear bomb for advertising.”
– Dir Branding Goodby Silverstein & Partners
“Every decade lately there’s a new technology that sets the landscape. In the 2000s cheap sensors are making an interaction decade culminating in a robot takeoff.”
– Paul Saffo, Stanford
“Affective Interfaces demonstrated some cool new technology today that uses emotion sensing software with webcam footage. The company launched today at the TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco.”
-VentureBeat
What This Does / How We Do It
° Leverage emotion metrics to understand impact points for your site, media or content
° Augment click and site analytics with data that can validate your market assumptions
° Improve your creative cycles with better informed creative and messaging
° Get a view into the heart and mind of your customers
We use a webcam to capture facial expressions and synchronize the image with the recorded screencapture video. The customer then uploads the videos to our servers, we analyze the synchronized video, perform analytics, and produce clear actionable reports on market relevant emotions clearly correlated to elements of your product or branding.
Large representative samples, objective qualitative metrics, non local data, asynchronous testing, and aggregate cross sample measures provide unprecedented insight into the heart and mind of your customer.
Objective Affect Metrics
Affective Interfaces is chosen as TechCrunch50 Finalist!! Click to see our presentation
Knowing what your customers are doing is great, but wouldn’t you like to know why? Affective Interfaces has developed a ground-breaking technology that can give you the reasons behind the actions you see.
Using emotion sensing technology, Affective Interfaces uses a webcam to capture your customer’s facial expressions in response to your product and can help you uncover the non rational influences affecting decisions from purchase to engagement. We help you understand how people are feeling about your brand, products and messaging.