Hello, I'm Fannie, and I'm a Research Scientist at Snap.
I'm presenting Significant Otter,
Understanding the Role of Biosignals in Communication
It's well known that remote communication is challenging.
Over technology, you just don't get the social cues we need
to establish social connection.
I'm sure all of us have experienced this during the pandemic,
where we've had to rely heavily on text or video calls,
even now during this conference.
In all of these channels, it can be hard to get a sense of someone
without proper access to cues
like their facial expressions or their gestures.
In my research, I'm exploring new opportunities to address this
through expressive biosignals, the use of sensed physiological data,
such as our heart rate, as a new kind of social cue.
Today's world has a number of devices with sensors
that record data like heart rate,
and even share them with other people,
like the Fitbit and the Apple Watch.
Several prior works show that sharing this type of data
can be a playful way to express your emotions
and let people know what you're up to.
But while these works show that expressive biosignals
have the potential to affect the way we communicate
and connect with others
they haven't quite clarified what those effects are.
That was the goal of this research,
investigating the role of expressive biosignals in communication,
through two versions of an app called Significant Otter,
one with biosignals sensing OFF and one with it ON.
We investigated how shifting between these two versions
might 1) affect our communication
and 2) our feelings of connection with each other.
Significant Otter is an Apple Watch app for couples.
It's available on the app store,
so you can feel free to download and check it out.
We've had over 60 thousand app installations since our release,
and we have been featured on the App Store,
Apple Retail stores, and Product Hunt.
To use Significant Otter,
you can view the app on your watch,
using the crown on the top right to scroll
and see a set of otter emotion animations sensed from heart rate
For example if your heart rate is high,
you might see both an excited and an angry otter.
In the sensing OFF version, you'd see a set of random otters.
After selecting one you want,
you can tap to send it to your significant other
who will then get a notification on their watch that they can tap
to view the otter animation you sent,
after which, they can scroll through their own otters
and tap on it to react.
We ran a 1 month study deploying Significant Otter with 20 couples.
During the study,
participants used the sensing OFF version for first two weeks
before switching to sensing ON for the last two weeks.
We collected data throughout the study
through interviews and daily surveys on participants' usage.
Based on our qualitative analysis of their responses,
we found opportunities for biosignals to function
as "enhanced emojis."
With sensing OFF, the otters were essentially
a shorter emoji or sticker keyboard,
similar to those on existing apps.
One of the challenges of emojis, though,
is that they're known to have multiple possible meanings
We also saw this in our study,
where people were confused about what their partner's otter meant.
Sensing ON actually mitigated these issues
and enhanced communication,
where people could more easily send their state, backed by data.
Since it was tied to their biosignals,
the otters simply represented their emotions,
which, we found, also helped couples become more open
and honest with each other about their true emotions.
Overall, 3/4ths of participants
preferred the sensing ON version for this reason.
Future work could explore
extending these benefits into existing communication platforms
such as integrating biosignals into existing stickers or emojis,
with badges to indicate that they reflect the body's state.
At the same time, we saw tensions between people and our system.
Significant Otter is a form of AI-mediated communication,
in which messages are supplied by an AI system.
The app suggested your otter's emotion based on your heart rate,
which some people blindly trusted,
while others were more skeptical
based on their lay understanding of emotions
or confidence in knowing themselves
This led to concerns that people didn't have
agency over their own feelings
or weren't putting in effort to reflect on how they're actually feeling,
versus just sending what the system told them.
Future work should explore these tensions further,
and build systems that better collaborate with users based on
their subjective understanding of their own emotions
To summarize,
we evaluated the role of biosignals in communication
by exploring people's perceptions of shifting between
a sensing ON and OFF version of Significant Otter
In terms of communication,
we found that sensing ON with biosignals
helped people more easily keep in touch with each other's
emotional state, backed by data.
This depended on people's perceptions
of the system's accuracy, though.
We also found that biosignals helped build feelings of connection
through authenticity,
where people became more compelled to share
their actual emotions with each other,
though with some questions around agency over those emotions.
Thank you very much for watching!