Background
This is a project that I designed and built for a Physical computing module with fellow student Vinuta Madhukar while studying Interaction and experience design in UL. Using an Arduino Uno, we created an impulse detector. This device is a speculative design which extends upon ways that wearable technology could be utilized. The device reads the users level of arousal as well as significant increases of arousal in order to notify or remind them to consider your emotional state, especially when making decisions.
Determining Impulse
There are two important factors to consider in understanding emotion, Valence and Arousal. Valence refers to the quality of emotion that a person is feeling, whether it's a positive or negative experience. Arousal refers to the intensity of an emotion. When you combine the two you start to get more quantitative ideas of an emotion that a person is feeling. During our research for this project, we found scientific studies supporting that humans are more inclined to make impulsive decisions when they are in a state of heightened arousal, regardless of Valence.
When a person is in a heightened state of arousal, there are changes in their skin conductivity. The skin conductance response, also known as the electrodermal response or galvanic skin response, is the phenomenon that the skin momentarily becomes a better conductor of electricity when either external or internal stimuli occur that are physiologically arousing. These changes can be detected by a galvanic skin response sensor. For this project, we used home made GSR sensors and an arduino Uno to build our own Impulse Detector.
