Emotional texting

A mobile app for digital communications

This project was made in collaboration with Chang (Cici) Liu

Digital written communication is taking away so much from in-person communication. Body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, intonation, rhythm of talk, prosody (tone or accent of a syllable, the rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech) and facial expression and body language in general.

Using the meaning of the words in the chat, FeelMe is looking to fill in the gaps in digital communication

Through an API (by Alchemy) we can give a score of how negative or positive each word used in context, then average the result to view an emotion in one segment of massage. We have created a scale that represent positive and negative on a color range. Thus mapping a sentiment to a color.

Basing on a color research, we decided to use red as positive (love, passion,hot) and blue as negative (cold, disconnected, sad) but this could be easily changed.

The score is implemented into the chat, giving a background color to the line/s being sent. The overall text thread is a reflection of the conversation mood.

The next step is to see how might we influence the content of the message by making people more aware to what they type AS they type.. If we can make the color appear as one types.

Taking this forward…

Some existing platforms let the user “measure” the communication he has with others. They look at a connection between 2 people and give it its own stage. Facebook allows looking back at a relationship, summing all communication involving these 2 people, giving it a cover photo and the user can even share it with the world.

The ability to look back at a connections can reveal new aspects… Patterns, communication intensity, how far back we go etc. This method, after a while of of use will allow the user to visualize a map of all history conversations and a view on emotions, a gradient representing the relationship, positive and negative peaks, worming periods vs cooler ones and maybe an average with this a particular person.

This could be an addition to existing ways to conversing, so why not just feed it with ALL the existing conversations through different programs? Skype, Email, Text messages, iMassage, Whatsapp, Viber etc. don’t need wait ten years to find a pattern! Try in now!