Rick Barraza

Thursday March 26, 2009

EMOTIV Thought Control, WPF and Magic

I first got a glimpse of the Emotiv headset in a small video shown at MIX08. The panel was on the future of Human / Computer Interfaces and Dave Wolf was discussing my work with Project Maestro and the Wii. But when I saw the brief clip of the Emotiv headset and it's mind control interface, I was instantly smitten and wanted to learn more.

As it turns out, over the next couple of months I was able to get to know the Emotiv gang in San Francisco and eventually they were kind enough to let disappear one of their early developer headsets into Cynergy.Labs for a couple weeks to let me tinker with it.

The video link above shows the results. This first iteration I had access to is tuned to register facial expressions, emotional states, and can be trained to respond to more cognitive commands; such as push, spin, left, right, etc. However, it didn't come with a managed code DLL, so working with WPF required some prep work first. But what a great time I had! The first time you put it on and go through the training, moving things with your mind, you feel very force unleashed.

While I only had enough time to film one of the 3 sample apps I wanted to build to interface with the EMOTIV headset, I'm glad my short video won an honorable mention at this year's MIX09 Show Off competition.

"A Little Bit of Sugar..."

There is one thing I want to call out in the video, however, that I think is an important point to discuss for User Experience Designers. If you notice closely, when I'm transitioning between photos I'm using a Pixel Shader to apply a ripple effect transition between images. As an experience developer, it should be obvious that a Pixel Shader transition has no direct association to listening and responding to events (even if those events are fired with a thought instead of a mouse click). However, as an experience designer, a very important point remains:

"As our industry continues to convert Science Fiction into Science Fact (with multitouch surfaces in all types of form factors, 3D Displays, Thought Interfaces, etc.), we need to respect the sad but true fact that Hollywood and Gaming has usually drawn first blood in our audience's mind as far as what the expected experience should be."

So with the Emotiv WPF demo, then, I wanted to respect and appeal to what the general audience expects from such an experience. And if there's one thing Hollywood and Gaming has taught us to to expect, is that any use of mind control will warp the very fabric of space-time! From Akira to XMEN to Dark City to Force Unleashed, this expectation is baked into our media soaked subconscious. Although not having the ripple effect would be more representative of the actual code mechanics, if the paradigm is too new then adding a ripple effect is just good showmanship to help transition the audience into accepting a new modality, especially if they are already subconsciously expecting such a transition.

The same could be said for that first generation of Point and Shoot digital camera's that needed to be shipped with an artificial shutter sound when you took a picture. There was no shutter mechanism in the product at all! Yet, without the sound, it was too new too fast and any other sound, even a more representative digital beep, wouldn't deliver the same transitional experience. So UX does what it has to do based on the target and the objectives. Sometimes UX needs to serve as a bridge when an established fiction experience needs to starts becoming a reality based experience.

You can learn more about the EMOTIV headset and sign up for the wait list here:

http://www.emotiv.com/

Last I heard, they should be shipping later this year. I'm definitely on the waiting list to get my hands back on one of these things and see what other goodies the Emotiv gang has in store. You should definitely check it out when they drop!

\rb