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Your Face is the Key: How Emotion Recognition is Revolutionising Mobile Apps

Facial recognition technology has come a long way in recent years, and its use in mobile apps has increased dramatically. While facial recognition is used for security purposes, like unlocking your phone or accessing sensitive data, it's also increasingly used for emotional recognition.

Emotion recognition technology uses a camera to capture facial expressions and analyzes them to determine a person's emotional state. This technology is still in its infancy, but it has a lot of potential in the world of mobile apps.

Help senior residents’ emotional well-being

Ovation Communities, a senior living and care provider in Milwaukee, is the first in the US to use the SOLO app, developed by an Israeli tech startup, to improve residents' emotional well-being through personalized music. 

The app uses facial recognition and artificial intelligence to monitor a resident's emotional state and then selects music videos that are familiar and meaningful to the resident. These videos aim to amplify positive emotions, promote relaxation, calm agitation, and provide meaningful interaction. 

The app allows caregivers to engage residents one-on-one in an interactive, contactless way during the pandemic when group activities were put on hold. SOLO claims that after 30 days of use, senior living and care communities reported a 92% resident engagement rate and a 76% improvement in resident mood. The app is particularly beneficial for older adults, including those living with dementia and cognitive issues, for whom music offers emotional and behavioral benefits.

An app that helps you reduce your stress levels

Another use case for emotion recognition technology is helping people stay calm in difficult situations. For example, imagine an app that detects when you're feeling stressed or anxious and provides you with guided meditation exercises to help you relax. This type of app could be incredibly useful for people who struggle with anxiety or stress and want to find a way to cope with it on their own.

Design firm Altitude has created a concept app called Moodit that uses emotion-detecting software to monitor text messages, social media updates and newsfeeds, aimed at helping people become more aware of their emotions and those of their peers to make difficult conversations easier. 

Moodit uses a spectrum of colours to represent different emotions, with prompts and notifications designed to help users deal with emotions effectively. The app would also aggregate the emotional temperature of entire networks to report on “trending” emotions. The mood detection software Moodit employs is based on a database of words coded as “negative” or “positive”. The app would require users to be active on social media or text frequently to work effectively.

What if we could add the analysis of facial expressions to this emotion AI?

Mental health support app

With the increasing demand for mental health support, there is a growing interest in developing technologies that can detect and monitor individuals' emotional states in real-time. 

Emotion recognition technology could be used to identify and track changes in emotions that could be indicative of mental health issues such as depression or anxiety.

For example, an app could use the front-facing camera on a user's smartphone to analyze their facial expressions and identify emotional cues such as frowns, furrowed brows, or smiles. The app could then provide users with personalized feedback and resources based on their emotional state. This could include suggestions for self-care activities, mindfulness exercises, or even connecting them with a mental health professional if necessary.

The future is at our doorstep

The use of emotion recognition technology in mobile apps is an exciting development that could have a significant impact on people's lives. 

Looking at the future, emotion recognition technology is likely to become more advanced and integrated into a wider range of applications. Think about using this technology to personalize user experiences on social media platforms, with feeds and recommendations tailored to match their current emotional state. The possibilities are endless!

As technology continues to evolve, we can expect to see even more innovative use cases emerge, and it will be interesting to see how it's integrated into our daily lives.

If you are considering using emotion recognition in your app, check our AI technology here.

We can help you turn it into a reality.

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