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Software Science

Researchers Aim To "Read Minds" of PC Users 121

Posted by kdawson from the knew-you-were-going-to-say-that dept.
hhavensteincw writes "Scientists at Tufts University are researching the use of light aimed at the forehead to measure the stress, work overload, or distraction a computer user may be feeling, as a way to adjust the UI to adapt to a user's emotional state. The research combines biomedical engineering and machine learning to adjust the UI. The project, which requires users to wear a futuristic head band, uses light to measure the flow of oxygenated blood to the brain that signals a user's rising stress levels typically associated with increasingly difficult tasks."
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Researchers Aim To "Read Minds" of PC Users More

Researchers Aim To "Read Minds" of PC Users

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  • Does it run as a daemon? (Score:4, Funny)

    by BadAnalogyGuy ( 945258 ) <BadAnalogyGuy@gmail.com> on Wednesday October 10, 2007 @05:03AM (#20923823)
    I wonder how a resident daemon would interpret the user's reaction after typing "rm -rf /" instead of "rm -rf ./"

    How would it adjust the UI to fit his mood? Perhaps a soothing blue would be in order.

    • Re:Does it run as a daemon? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Xiph ( 723935 ) on Wednesday October 10, 2007 @05:11AM (#20923867)
      Headline seems a bit sensationalists, they're not reading minds, they MEASURING STRESS.

      • Like a lie detector? Now that turns out to be sooooo accurate.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by arivanov ( 12034 )
        Yep.

        And I bet a case of beer that the first PHB to purchase the device will put it to use as a lie detector in teleconference meetings straight away: "Jones, your stress levels have increased when we discussed the project deadlines. Are you hiding something?"

        No thanks, I would not like something like that hooked up to my computer...

        • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward

          No thanks, I would not like something like that hooked up to my computer...

          That's company's computer to you. You don't get to say what will be hooked to it.
          Hmm, now that you've mentioned that, are you hiding something about project deadlines?

          Your boss

          Joke aside, congratulation, you've done it... after your quite juicy advertising the benefits to PHBs (depiction of inflicted fear and PHB undisturbed domination), they WILL make it mandatory!

          • Lay off him just now. Resume indoctrination when you get these things hooked up to some high voltage testicle shockers

            Your Boss

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by niceone ( 992278 ) *
        Headline seems a bit sensationalists, they're not reading minds, they MEASURING STRESS.

        Well, they are using the colour of your forehead to determine how many times you have whacked your head into the screen in desperation recently, which probably correlates well with your stress level.

    • I wonder how a resident daemon would interpret the user's reaction after typing
      Ha! So there ARE demons that read minds! Shame on you, doctor, for arguing with me! *mutters*

    • Re:Does it run as a daemon? (Score:4, Funny)

      by onion2k ( 203094 ) on Wednesday October 10, 2007 @05:24AM (#20923927) Homepage

      How would it adjust the UI to fit his mood? Perhaps a soothing blue would be in order.

      I'm on Windows here, and I find it incredibly annoying when the UI changes to 'soothing blue'.
      • It might be just me but if I happened to be in an emotional state, I really wouldn't want the UI to change. I'm stressed cus I can't find this button, oh thank god there it is so I relax, hey presto the button has moved... ARGH!!!!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hawk ( 1151 )
        But this would help! If the windows job does its job well enough, it will (several times a week) load itself entirely to ram and then delete windows from the disk (probably while pumping Ride of the Valkyrie out the speakers at high volume)

        haw

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Ed Avis ( 5917 )
      Why would you ever want to type 'rm -rf ./'?

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by alexhs ( 877055 )

      How would it adjust the UI to fit his mood?
      It seems you just made a big mistake.
      Would you want me to help you writing your resignation letter ?
    • everyone know it. All it's going to do all day is brows for porn.

  • Yup (Score:4, Funny)

    by Corporate Troll ( 537873 ) on Wednesday October 10, 2007 @05:04AM (#20923827) Homepage Journal
    Raise of my temperature means I'm wanking off at porn.... No surprise to me ;-)

  • I, for one, ... (Score:3, Funny)

    by darthflo ( 1095225 ) on Wednesday October 10, 2007 @05:04AM (#20923835)
    ... welcome our mind-reading, futuristic-headband-enforcing UI-adjusting overlords!

  • Great! (Score:2, Funny)

    by curty ( 42764 )
    Now my boss and work colleagues will know whether or not to approach me, by looking at the colour of my screen first!

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by nargileh ( 1113371 )
      Well it's more like, your boss will know exactly how stressed you are and might decide he can crank it up a notch and give you extra work & stress. And he won't need to look at your screen, he will have a dashboard with stress metrics for all his employees on his own desktop. The adaptive UI story is just a smokescreen deployed at employee level to hide the real intent of this device.

      • The adaptive UI story is just a smokescreen deployed at employee level to hide the real intent of this device.

        Well sure, any technology can be used by the dark side, but your statement reeks of paranoia and foot-in-mouth syndrome. A big issue in modern desktop systems is information overload. If you boot up a windows computer that hasn't been on in a year, it'll spend about the first 10 minutes randomly pestering you with things (new updates available, unused icons on the desktop, unused icons in the

  • 2001 (Score:5, Funny)

    by kcbrown ( 7426 ) <slashdot@sysexperts.com> on Wednesday October 10, 2007 @05:11AM (#20923873)

    "Scientists at Tufts University are researching the use of light aimed at the forehead to measure the stress, work overload, or distraction a computer user may be feeling, as a way to adjust the UI to adapt to a user's emotional state.

    Aha. I always wondered what HAL's light was for...

    "Look Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over."

    If my computer "adjusts" its UI the way HAL did, I'm gonna kick it's ass...

  • ...would turn pitch black while reading sensationalist headlines like these which actually have little in common with the article/research objective. ah...and some blood-red stains.

  • nothing new, nothing useful (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kabrakan ( 13409 ) on Wednesday October 10, 2007 @05:20AM (#20923909) Homepage
    God, there are so many stories about this kind of tech. But you know, its not a very useful interface unless it has the right software to communicate with it--Like intelligent agents that show their own emotion, interacting with yours. I mean, does reading my physiology and figuring out that i'm stressed going to make the web page load faster?
    • Only if it's porn.
    • "I mean, does reading my physiology and figuring out that i'm stressed going to make the web page load faster?"
      And if so, would that cause me to get stressed automatically just so the compuer would be snappier? On the other hand, this technology could be useful for Vista. Once you've seen the tenth "Allow/Deny?" dialog and are agitated, it stops bothering you. But I've seen this story several times now and it always sounds totally stupid; make computers as un-stressful as possible to use in the first place.
    • easy bet...

      p0rn and P2P.
        nothing to see here, move along.

  • "We're picking up very lightweight, subtle information," Jacob said. "We're not always sure we're getting perfect information, so we have to respond in a lightweight way. We've got to respond in gentle ways."

    Hi Jacob, this is the military, I mean errr the National Science Foundation, we're backing off your funding, it seems that we misunderstood the specs you had given wherein you mentioned headbands and optical beams...
  • Allow me to save someone millions of dollars in wasted researh funds.

    boobies boobies ass ass boobies boobies penis whoah where did that come from boobies boobies ass ass boobies boobies

  • Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Erikderzweite ( 1146485 ) on Wednesday October 10, 2007 @05:37AM (#20923983)
    If they make it possible to make interface work better if I am stressed, I will have only one question - why not turn the "stressed" option on by default?
    I simply don't get it, if they think they can make programs work safer/faster/better, why can't they do this without the need for me to be stressed.

  • Seriously... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tcdk ( 173945 ) on Wednesday October 10, 2007 @05:42AM (#20924009) Homepage Journal
    .. what would you use this for?

    Lets say that you application ,at any give time can know the stress level of the user. On a scale from 1 to 11.

    How would you want an application that you use or develop to changes it workings depending on this?

    There's an example of workload sharing in TFA, but really, there's a fine line between "this person is stressed and working well with that", and "this person is overstressed, and we better share the load a bit".

    And for everyday use... "You seem stressed - I'll delay all your incoming mails (including the one you are stressed over not having arrived yet)" ...

    I just don't think our computers are intelligent enough right now to use this information to anything useful...

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by duggi ( 1114563 )
      The annoying headband is a problem, or else this could prove good news for the hospitality business. Imagine if a hotel room changes its colour according to your mood. This would be a great advertisement. But I think people are different, so would be their reactions to this product. Not finding universal appeal, it is going to die a slow death. If it ever comes out that is.

    • . what would you use this for?

      It could be useful (the stress-reading portion, anyway) for UI testing. People can't always clearly remember/articulate problems with an interface, this could give you pretty accurate feedback.

      It could also have applications in learning management systems.

      But at this point it sounds like a solution in search of a problem.

    • .. what would you use this for?

      Social networking. The kids, what with their rock n' roll, baggy pants, facebook and whatnot, love this kind of thing. I seriously think that if they manged to get this fashionable, the current middle/high school set would pay their parents money every which way to have "Mood: Crinkly forehead emo" automatically updating on their networking system of choice.

      Later down the road, I could see this 'possibly' working with more wired environments. Think a smarthouse that's noti

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mrjb ( 547783 )
      And for everyday use... "You seem stressed - I'll delay all your incoming mails (including the one you are stressed over not having arrived yet)" ... Clippy, is that you?
    • Gaming AI.
      Word on the street is that Left 4 Dead [wikipedia.org] is trying this sort of thing in its game design. (See "The Director")
      A game that knows when to turn up the pressure, and then relieve it, would be incredibly fun if done correctly.

    • .. what would you use this for?

      You're thinking in too narrow of a focus. The more general problem besides stress-measurement is attention modeling. If your computer can identify the general notion of what you're doing ("he's busy, don't bother him" vs. "he's just surfing the web, him him with distractions!"), it is one step towards not distracting you when you're in the middle of getting work done.

      Think about it... you're furiously working on a problem... lots of mouse and keyboard activity... you

  • The only good use I can think of is for: Adaptive GUI coloring, when I get overheated because some lame-o though bright yellow could be a funny background color. Music automatic volume control, when stressed low volume music can calm me. Maybe a health advisor (Clippo better stays 6 feet under or I'm suing microsoft on necromancy) For making the software interact better with the user, each software should have infinite interaction ways... So I guess programmers would be the first ones needing this device,

  • Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)

    by StarfishOne ( 756076 ) on Wednesday October 10, 2007 @06:04AM (#20924119)

    1. You're late for a presentation

    2. You fire up PowerPoint in a desperate attempt to make some crucial changes to keep your potential customers happy

    3. Your computer sees that you're stressed... which it considers to be unhealthy

    4. Then Clippy pops up and says 'I can't do that Dave'!

    • If they take this to the next step we're all screwed!

      Clippy with a direct feed from the users brain would be like a tinfoil hat infected with a CIA root kit. Mark my words: They have been plugging mice into computers for decades, mice are the ideal lab animal, it won't be long before corporate technology is able to reproduce tinfoil hats, soon as you put on the infected hat - bam - they suck your brain so dry that start voting for your favorite on "Big Brother".
  • This technique is a type of functional neuroimaging technology that offers a relatively non-invasive, safe, portable, and low-cost method of indirect and direct monitoring of brain activity. By measuring changes in near-infrared light, it allows researchers to monitor blood flow and blood oxygenation in the front cortex (only) of the brain. It is still a new technique, so it is not yet widely used in research, but it shows promising results in studies done to-date.

    http://psychcentral.com/lib/2007/what-is-fu [psychcentral.com]
  • This is what the different PC users are really thinking;

    Microsoft PC user: I've been pwned.

    Macintosh PC user: Steve Jobs glow is supernatural.

    Linux PC user: Microsoft die! die! die!

    BSD PC user: Not dead yet.

    Call me Kreskin.
  • When the hardware detects anxiety, an animated paperclip pops up and says "I see you are feeling stressed".

    Yup, that'll calm the user right down...
  • What is really needed is a computer which does what I want and not what it thinks I want.

    • What is really needed is a computer which does what I want and not what it thinks I want.

      Sounds like you should be using a CLI!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by timster ( 32400 )
        So he asks for a computer that does what he wants, and you want to give him one that does what he tells it to do? Something is wrong with this picture.
  • I have this image of a lurking robotic device, towering over a cowering office worker, shining a light onto his/her head, saying in a suitably intimidating voice, "I sense you are experiencing stress"

  • And then what? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hcdejong ( 561314 ) <hobbes@@@xmsnet...nl> on Wednesday October 10, 2007 @06:35AM (#20924279)
    As stress levels rise, I want the computer to get out of my way as much as possible, not have Clippy pop up saying, "It seems you're trying to accomplish a difficult task. Do you want me to mess it up for you?"
    Also, if there's a way the computer can make my life easier, it should do that already rather than wait until I'm stressed out.
  • "Hey, shutting this thing off is proving an increasingly difficult task! The changing UI is so damn stressing!"

    Also: "We're picking up very lightweight, subtle information," Jacob said. "We're not always sure we're getting perfect information, so we have to respond in a lightweight way. We've got to respond in gentle ways." Does subtle here mean rough? Lightweight as in fuzzy? This clears it all about it's usefulness, Eliza3000...
  • You are getting stressed. Cancel or Allow?
  • ... and my stress is correspondingly high, as I dive under the desk.

    Is there a video game concept here? Real-life Gears of War or something?
  • It'll only increase my stress levels if I'm nervous and a dumb algorithm shuffles the UI in front of me in attempt to make it better.

    In such moments I'd rather prefer consistency and things I know. The errors I know, the controls I know, in the position and colors I know.
  • A headband? The 80s are so over. Go read someone else's mind, Johnny 5.
  • Ask anyone in prepress or DTP - Apple Macs have had stress detectors built in for years! As the deadline approaches, you can almost guarantee it'll crash more as you get more stressed. I read that the computer does it because it thinks you're working too hard for your own good.
  • Just because it's covered in a computerworld article doesn't mean it merits reposting... dupe link here [slashdot.org]

  • This is why apple does well (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Joe Tie. ( 567096 ) on Wednesday October 10, 2007 @07:18AM (#20924495)
    which requires users to wear a futuristic head band

    This is one of those few times when I find myself wishing for more female representation. For some reason, male geeks just don't seem to understand the publics fashion sense. Futuristic headband=dork headgear. The look is 'more' important than the functionality when it comes to getting anything which needs to be worn out the door. And if it means a headband, it's never going to get into public use.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Bai jie ( 653604 )
      I hear that futuristic headbands are in right now.

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I don't see what the big deal is. I always where a headband when I'm on my computer. It lets those around me know I'm all business, and the chicks think I'm hardcore.

  • Stressful UI (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Bai jie ( 653604 )
    Why would they need the UI to adjust? Wouldn't their efforts be better spent making a UI that was as little stress inducing as possible and have it run that way full time?
  • Google MentalPlex [google.com] was an April Fool's joke...
  • depending on various levels of stress

    on a lighter note,

    - level 1: UI starts lagging behind you, menu starts to flutter slowly, waiting cursor zooms in out a little to grab attention

    - level 2: Applications become non-responsive, screen fades in and out slowly and cursor blinking almost stops (which raises stress to a further level)

    - level 3, triggers as the voice recognition interprets f'in words frequently, and it locks everything takes user to an online yoga class

    but seriously, I think whoever sits in fron
  • What if...

    1. You're stressed about having to learn a new interface
    2. The interface changes
    3. See #1
  • Found this photo of the lead researcher. I knew there was something strange about this story. Lead Researcher [lastvigilante.com]
  • Back in the Amiga days I had an idea of using different biological readings with a video game. I never went anywhere with it but the basic idea was that dependent on the players physical state (maybe even far enough to decipher their emotions based on different readings) the game play could change in some fashion. Not too advanced of a concept but with as far as things have come since the late 80s/early 90s I think something like this could be done cost effectively today.
  • I want a Back to the Future-style suction cup.
  • "measure the stress, work overload, or distraction a computer user may be feeling"
    You are being distracted.
    Cancel or allow?
  • Instead of using this in a already developed product, it would make more sense in giving it to testers. Hey Frank, put on this headband before sliding into the testcube. Using camcorders and taking notes is already a part of usability testing, and this gear might be an added gadget in the arsenal.

    However, having more socially intelligent people running usability tests might prove a better solution in the long run. But then again we can't play around with gadgets and get printouts of nice charts of the stres
  • Never mind the computer knowing what I think, I'd like a device that let me know what the f#ck it is thinking, or better still the people responsible for the f#cking stupid f#cking program I'm trying to use.

    ( HUMAN CMDRGRAVY HAS BEEN SEDATED, HE WILL BE UNAVAILABLE FOR FURTHER COMMENT FOR SOME TIME )
  • That technology had already been tested as part of Microsoft office, but fell through when, after a late night of coding, the program was misconfigured to display Clippy whenever the user was feeling annoyed.
  • Ve have vays of makin you not stressed! ;-)
    • This is offtopic but I wanted to make sure you'd see it.

      You recommended I install openSUSE and KDE and I just wanted to say I've done both and it was dead easy to install. Much easier then Windows. I've used it for a little bit and there is a learning curve, but already I'm seeing the advantages to the differences. So thankyou very much for recommending both.
  • to measure stress and distraction levels.

    It would be much easier just to log Slashdot access.

  • Laser! Apply directly to the forehead!

    Laser! Apply directly to the forehead!

    Laser! Apply directly to the forehead!

    Laser is available without a prescription at research institutions nationwide.

  • If this system turned out to be at all accurate it would prove useful in chat programs. Seeing the moods people you are talking to would be incredibly helpful in deciphering ambivalent messages. Anyone follow me on this one?
  • The OS starts up an FPS for me to work my aggressions out on.
  • When I read the summary, this is what leapt to my mind [time-and-space.co.uk].
  • But scientists at Tufts University are not in charge of Gundam!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by bazald ( 886779 )
      But seriously, it just occurred to me how awesome this technology would be for video games. Then it occurred to me how useful this would be for the military and for other security-conscious organizations. Someone becomes stressed suddenly at a computer terminal? See what e-mail just arrived. UI applications are a joke OTOH.
  • If they want to read the mind of the typical PC user, they need to measure blood flow somewhere other than in the forehead.
  • Here's a neat bit of trivia: When she was an undergraduate at Harvard, Natalie Portman (birth name Natalie Hershlag) in 2002 was the co-author on a paper in the journal NeuroImage, titled Frontal Lobe Activation during Object Permanence: Data from Near-Infrared Spectroscopy [harvard.edu]. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIR) [wikipedia.org] is the same technique Jacob et al. (the researchers in the summary article) will be using to take measurements for adjusting user interfaces. Here's the abstract from Natalie Portman's paper:

  • Finally... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Michael O-P ( 31524 )
    I can start effectively marketing MRML (Mind-Reading Markup Language). [wap.org]
  • All I have to do is output "Jeez, that sucks," continuously. Works for porn, too ;-)...

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