Tekes funding awarded for a project aiming at understanding human emotions in digital interaction

Tekes – the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation – has granted a funding of 250 000 euros to the ‘Quantifying Human Experience for Increased Intelligence Within Work Teams and in the Customer Interface’ project, which is a joint venture of Aalto University, University of Helsinki, University of Oulu and 10 companies: Reaktor, Affecto, Elisa, Wunderkraut, IF, Mehiläinen, Fondia, Fira, Avaus and Wörks.

‘Digitalization offers opportunities for human collaboration on an unprecedented scale. However, the tools we use for communication fail to support many aspects that lie at the core of functional human connection: feeling of shared context, synchronization, and perhaps most importantly, human emotionality. As a result, misunderstandings during computer-mediated interaction are common, and joint problem-solving is hampered', tells Teemu Leinonen, project leader and professor at Aalto University’s Department of Media.

The project aims at creating new knowledge that opens up novel possibilities for improving digital interaction and using accurate information of individuals’ emotions in the design and testing of services, applications and contents. This aim will be achieved through the utilization of the emerging technologies for measurement of emotion-related biosignals and machine vision, and a combination of high-level scientific knowhow in cognitive, affective and social neuroscience, biosignal measurement and analysis, machine vision technology and algorithms, data fusion and complex network analysis as well as user-centric design methods.

More information: Teemu Leinonen, [email protected]

Photo: Eva Durall