Otter App Help Couples Communicate from the Heart

New app uses otters for communication. Couples can send animated otters to one another that represent emotions and activities like sad, excited, calm or angry, or they can be working, exercising, eating or tired. "Our social cues are limited online," said Fannie Liu, a research scientist at Snap Inc who earned her Ph.D. from the Human-Computer Interaction Institute in Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science. "We're exploring a new way to support digital connection through a deeper and more internal cue."

Liu built Significant Otter, an app for smart watches that helps couples to communicate with each other based on their sensed heart rate.

The app senses a person's heartrate and suggests otters with the emotion. A fast heartrate suggests an excited or angry otter, or an otter that is exercising or eating.

The reactions aren't based on the person's heartrate but are designed to provide support to the person communicating based on their heartrate.

The team tested the app in April and May 2020 with 20 couples separated by the pandemic and found that the use of biosignals.

Liu and the team didn't intend to test the app during the pandemic, but couples who participated in the test said that the app gave them a sense of their partner's physical state even when they couldn't be physically together.

Advertisement

"It's coming from your heart," Liu said. "It can be a very intimate gesture to see or feel someone's heartbeat. It's a signal that you're living."

Advertisement

Source-Medindia