What Your Skin Says About Your Mood?

Skin conductance is a measure of how much someone sweats, indicating their emotional reactions as well as physical reactions and is the basis for technologies such as lie detectors.

An international team of researchers from Sweden and the UK have developed an innovative way of interpreting biological signals produced by the conductance of our skin. Using data obtained using a Philips wrist-worn wearable sensor device that also include an accelerometer to measure movement, the researchers' system displays information in the form of colourful spiral graphics in real time on a smart phone, as well as a recording of data, for the wearer to interpret and reflect ons.

In the study published in ToCHI journal, it was shown that the obtained biological signals can be used for many purposes such as stress, sports health, effort or emotional monitoring, according to personal needs.

This study is important for the first use of sweating and skin conductivity as markers in wearable technology.

Reference: Sanches P, et al. Ambiguity as a Resource to Inform Proto-Practices: The Case of Skin Conductance. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 26, 4, Article 21 (July 2019), 32 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3318143