Monitoring Your Emotional State

Jess McMullin, my former colleague over at nForm User Experience, sent me this link to the Exmocare wristwatch today…

“The Exmocare wristwatch monitors your heart rate, heart rate variability, movement and galvanic skin response, all of which the watch uses to determine how you’re doing, specifically emotionally.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about using physiological data like this in support of user testing for several years now. I’m not sure if this wristwatch has the kind if sensitivity necessary for that kind of research, but I’m interested in trying it!

Ultimately though, physiological data requires other supporting insights to be really valuable. Although the watch will trigger an email if the wearer’s emotional experience gets out of hand, I don’t think this would be enough detail to connect particular user or system actions to particular emotional shifts.

Coupled with video to help indicate the value (good or bad) of the stimulus, it might however, add some insight or act as a trigger for deeper questioning when conducting quick and dirty testing with users on smaller client engagements.

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