An Emotional Compass: Emotions on Social Networks and a New Experience of Cities

Abstract

The methodology and technique used to design and develop an Emotional Compass, a device for orientation in urban environments which uses geo-located content harvested from major social networks to create novel forms of urban navigation. The user-generated content harvested from social networks is processed in real time to capture emotional information as well as geo-location data and different types of additional meta-data. This information is then rendered on mobile screens under the form of a Compass interface, which can be used to understand the direction and locations in which specific emotions (or their combinations) have been expressed on social networks. This gives rise to achieve novel ways for experiencing the city, including peculiar forms of way-finding techniques which rely on emotions rather than street names and buildings. The resulting experience constitutes an interesting mix of Augmented Reality and Rhabdomancy.