At the Dutch Design Week, the “Emotion Whisperer”

During this years Dutch Design Week, possibly the two most interesting news according to my friend Raymond Kersten, who attended the Event and had the opportunity of speaking to the designers of these were the Robots and the Emotion Whisperer by Simon Dogger.

Simon Dogger is a visually impaired designer who graduated at the Design Academy.  He has designed a portable device application that sends images of conversation to an emotion recognition app.  The device is composed of glasses with a camera and a small metal “Pebble”, in order for you to “read” the person´s facial expressions you need to hold the pebble in your hand to feel someone smiling.

These images are analyzed and translated into a sensory signals, whenever the person smiles, lift eyebrows, frowns etc, the camera registers these facial expressions and translates them into signals to the pebble you hold.
This is the latest in technology, and a leap forward fitting within the trend Digital Empathy as it shows a change in design where technology can recognize and improve the mood of a person by recognizing and analyzing emotions.  As such, visually impaired people are able to feel the emotions of others and as a result improve their mood.

Now if you think this is too futuristic for you, read our next post about Sophia the Robot.