 |
|
More Related Stories |
| Page (1) of 1 - 07/31/06 |
 email article |
 print
page |
Anyone who has corresonded by e-mail, in a discussion forum, or using instant messaging is aware of the difficulties in accurately communicating emotions. To cope with the lack of body language, computer users have created emoticons (those little smilies, like :-) ) and experimented with avatars. Even so, you can certainly recall a time when a correspondent read a comment the wrong way, picking up an unintended emotional implication. With more people telecommuting or working in far-flung offices, the need to streamline communication becomes more important. We have all sorts of tools and technologies to exchange data -- from XML to Web Services -- but nothing really addresses this area.
Last week, the W3C announced the launch a new "incubator activity," called the "Emotion Incubator Group,"and its purpose is to take us beyond the narrow range of the emoticon.
According to the group's initial chair, Marc Schröder, today's user interfaces are starting to use intuitively understandable icons and colors rather than purely verbal descriptions. He explains, "These pictures are closer to our usual world experience, so that the need to understand 'how the machine is thinking' decreases." Push this a bit further, Schröder says, and you get to social signals: "content" means all is going well; "alarmed" indicates that something is wrong; "helpless:" a user needs your help.
According to Schröder, the types of interactive systems that the incubator group is researching include devices trying to recognize users' emotions (e.g., user frustration in a call center); to express emotions to the user (such as through the tone-of-voice or facial expression in a speaking, audio-visual conversational agent); and AI systems that do some reasoning about emotions. For example, an AI system might need to infer the appropriate emotion to simulate in a given situation, or anticipate the emotion of a user.
Schröder says, "The legendary paper clip is an example where a user interface ignored the social rules of communication, often causing user aggression. In emotion research, there is research on politeness and display rules,' defining the types of interaction that are admissible in a given culture. In the example of the paper clip, one important rule it ignored was this: if you are incompetent, don't get into a competent person's way when he/she is under time pressure."
"Of interest to the challenge of creating an IT based language to represent emotions is that Incubator process contemplates that outside experts will be invited to participate," commented Andy Updegrove on The Standards Blog. "In this case, the project will build on the earlier work of a European-based "network of excellence" called the Human-Machine Interaction Network on Emotion (HUMAINE), which recently released its own HUMAINE Emotion Annotation and Representation Language (reassuringly named EARL, rather than, say, Human Annotation Language, which would have yielded the unfortunate acronym 'HAL')."
According to its charter, the mission of the Emotion Incubator Group, part of the Incubator Activity, is to "investigate the prospects of defining a general-purpose Emotion annotation and representation language, which should be usable in a large variety of technological contexts where emotions need to be represented."
That doesn't mean you should expect to see immediate results. Schröder explains, "We really are talking about tomorrow's technology here: we call it 'emotion-oriented computing' in HUMAINE (the European Network of Excellence on Emotions in Human-Machine Interaction). HUMAINE is trying to lay the scientific foundations today for what will be standard technology in, say, between 10 and 50 years' time; on the way there, first applications are emerging, but will probably stay in niche markets for some time."
However, it's never too early to contemplate standards. In complex software, components at different levels need to communicate, which requires an agreed-upon way to representing emotion. "This may sound trivial, but if the emotion recogniser represents emotion in one way, the reasoning engine in a second way, and the expressive component in a third way (which is the case in state-of-the art research systems), then an integration is highly difficult," says Schröder.
Plus, the emotion researchers do not agree on how to describe emotions even amongst themselves. According to Schröder, there are a variety of different descriptions (categories, dimensions, appraisals), each of which has its proponents, and each of which are more useful in some contexts than in others. He says, "Rather than a simple question of formalism (defining some XML language), the challenge is to also propose mechanisms for reconciling those different descriptions."
The Emotion Incubator group will discuss use cases where emotions need to be represented. Requirements from these use cases are expected to lead to the proposal of a suitable representation format (probably XML-based), Schröder says. "At this stage, with many unsolved issues, it is not yet clear whether the work in the Incubator group will actually end up as some W3C standard. For the moment, the task is to find out, through discussion, whether a standardisation may already make sense at this early stage of affairs."
If you liked this article
click here to recommend it.
Page: 1
Esther Schindler has been writing about technology professionally since 1992, and her byline has appeared in dozens of IT publications. She's optimized compilers, owned a computer store, taught corporate training classes, moderated online communities, run computer user groups, and, in her spare time, written a few books. You can reach her at [email protected].Related Sites: Digital Producer , AEC News Room , Digital CAD , Digital Game Developer , Digital Media Designer , IT Business Net , Business (IBN) , Internet (IBN) , SoftwareDev (IBN)
Related Newsletter: Cad List Newsletter , Pixels Newsletter , Levels Newsletter , Tutorial Finder , Review Seeker , IT Weekly Newsletter
To Comment on This Article, Click HERE
Most Recent Reader Comments:
Click Here To Read All Posts
Must be Registered to Respond (Free Registration!!!, CLICK HERE)
Digital favorites
Source:Digital Media Online.
All Rights Reserved
