First Idea:
The visitor wears a bracelet that reads data from the body (emotional arousal )
- Galvanic Skin sensor / data logger
- Heart beat rate ( maybe not )
- RFID / Short radio / 2d barcode / Infra-red
- The "artwork" data and the emotional arousal data can be stored on a memory chip
- Mapping: the data can be download to a computer or use a wireless system to send the data to be used in processing where all the data is visually represented
- The "artwork" data must be connected to a database of all artwork
GSR - Galvanic Skin Response
Is a method for measuring the electrical resistance of the skin. The magnitude of the electrical conductance in a person's skin can be directly correlated to their emotional state. The GSR is highly sensitive to emotions in some people. Fear, anger, startle response, orienting response and sexual feelings are all among the emotions which may produce similar GSR responses.
The more relaxed you are > more dryer your skin is > higher the skin’s electrical resistance
More Stress > your hand’s sweat > resistance goes down
It is often used in psychology for quantifying a person's reaction to different stimulus. It is also often implemented in a traditional lie detectors.
The current theory is that a person under arousal generates sweat at the skin that changes the skin's electrical properties. However, this explanation is still debatable, as some scientists claim that the conductance changes too fast to attribute the cause to sweat.
It's not the value of resistance that is meaningful - some people can sweat more than others. What is important is the rate of change of this value over time and the relation btw this data and the artwork that the visitor is seeing.
Tracking the visitor location/ position
Since visitor are inside of the museum , GPS cannot be use to know where the visitor is on the building and also with GPS it's not possible to know which artwork the visitor is experience at a given moment.
The first technology I thought in using was RFID. The device could had a RFID reader and every artwork could
be identified with a RFID tag. But RFID have a very short range, so the visitor, with this technology, must go near the piece to track it and this is something that I don't want but maybe is going to be a solution. I would like the visitor to use the device without thinking that they were wearing it and not having a conscious interaction with the artworks.
Tom suggest to use 2d barcode to simplify my problem for now.Which visitor have a 2d barcode in the tshirt for example and every artwork must be installed with a camera to identified the visitor. I think that this, in pratical terms, is not going to work because the visitor must be standing front to the camera and of course, in terms of cost I think this option is also not pratical. Maybe the opposite is more realistic. If which artwork as a 2d barcode, the visitor could identified the work using their cellphone.
Another option is to install small short range FM radio transmitters at each location in the museum, each one transmitted a unique message. The device could have a radio receiver that would store which work the visitor saw and experience. I still have to do research in this technology but it can be an idea.
In the weekend I went to Moma and I noticed one interesting thing that I didn't remember before: most
of the people( not all) reads the legend card that identifies every artwork. I don't know if I can interpret this as a sign that the visitor wants more information about the piece.
If in every legend card/board there is a rfid tag or an infra red that connects with the visitor device, then the problem could have a solutionfor now. I also start enjoying the idea of having the visitor manifesting his desire of being tracked by a certain artwork and not with all. The physical gesture can also be interesting in terms of interaction.
Conclusion:
After all the research I made, I decided to use the RFID to track to which artwork the visitor is seeing. I decided to choose this technology to simplify the process of building a system that I could test to see how it works and that is easier for me to implement it. I could set up the rfid reader in the device and the tags on the legend of every artwork.
Instead of using a memory card to save all the data that is being collected, I decided to make the device with wireless capabilities, using an Xbee that sends the data wireless in real time to another Xbee that is connected to a computer. In the computer, a program will analize the data and stored it into a txt file that later could be accessed to the main application that will display the visualization.
Here is the scheme of the final system:
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