EmoTouch:About emoTouch
emoTouch turns any modern smartphone or tablet running the iOS operating systems (or Android in the emoTouch Web version) into a versatile scientific research tool that can be used to evaluate music, videos or live events in 'real time'.
emoTouch for iPad (discontinued)
The predecessor app emoTouch for Apple iPad is available again for free in Apple's iOS AppStore since March 2020.
Features of emoTouch (for iPad)
In an emoTouch session the user can continuously give reactions to played music, movies as well as live performances in one or two dimensions. An example for application is the elicitation of emotional self-disclosures in the two-dimensional emotion space with the dimensions valence (quality of emotion: negative - positive) and arousal (degree of arousal: active - passive). In emoTouch the user can for the first time directly and intuitively touch the emotion space. emoTouch offers a variety of features and configuration options:
- configurable user feedback in the form of a smileys or any image and a "worm" that visualizes the completed movement.
- marking of special events (e.g. musically induced goose bumps, 'chills') by a special touch gesture
- Music and video selection from the device's media library
- Silent mode for ratings at live concerts
- configurable coordinate system with arbitrary labels
- limitation of dimensions to x- or y-axis. This allows emoTouch to work as a one-dimensional slider for appropriate questions.
- freely selectable background images in order to freely adapt the overall design to the respective question or axis scaling, also as (partial) overlay of the video
- Configurable sampling rates of up to 30Hz
- Display of an arbitrary website at the end of a session allows the inclusion of an additional questionnaire or a "thank you" window
- Replay mode for previously collected data, including multiple runs or subjects simultaneously and optional visualization of arithmetic mean and standard deviation
- Data export to a text file readable by all common statistical programs with flexible scaling of the individual dimensions
emoTouch is only available in English, but all texts that the test subjects see can be changed in the app as desired. emoTouch is a development of the Chair of Systematic Musicology at the University of Osnabrück (Prof. Dr. Christoph Louven, Carolin Scholle).
emoTouch Web
emoTouch Web comprehensively develops the concept of the predecessor app emoTouch for iPad in terms of content, methodology and technology. The main features are a device-independent interface display and data storage based on web technologies, which for the first time allows the implementation of the BYOD concept ('Bring Your Own Device') in a music psychology research tool. Subjects, e.g. listeners in a live concert, can thus each use their own smartphone or tablet in the research setting. The overall concept of emoTouch Web consists of three building blocks:
- An interface that can be used on all current smartphones or tablets, on which test persons can continuously assess media (music, videos) or live musical situations played by the device on the touchscreen according to freely configurable criteria 'in real time'.
- Coordinated analysis tools for desktop computers that conveniently summarize, analyze and visualize the real-time data collected from the mobile devices.
- A real-time feedback system that aggregates the ratings of multiple subjects and reflects them back to the performers in various ways, e.g. in the stage area.
Fields of application
While emoTouch Web was inspired by the needs of research in musical emotion psychology and audience research, it offers complete flexibility and free configurability of the subject interface, instructions, program flows, and data logging. This extends the fields of application beyond music-related questions to research in other time-bound arts, such as theater, dance, or film, but also, for example, to use in other process-based, time-evolving situations, such as as an evaluation and feedback system in courses, lectures, or for researching political communication.
About the project
The development of emoTouch Web is funded by the program 'Kultur- und Geisteswissenschaften digital' of the Volkswagen Stiftung. The project is supported by the collaborators Carolin Scholle and Fabian Gehrs during the three-year period from 2020 to 2022. emoTouch and emoTouch Web are developments of the Chair of Systematic Musicology at the University of Osnabrück (Prof. Dr. Christoph Louven) and are available free of charge for scientific purposes.
Further links and sources
- The research project on the website of the Institute of Musicology and Music Education at the University of Osnabrück: https://www.musik.uni-osnabrueck.de/forschung/musikpsychologie_und_soziologie/forschungsprojekte/emotouch_web.html
- Contribution to emoTouch in the Jahrbuch Musikpsychologie, Volume 25, 2015: https://www.psycharchives.org/bitstream/20.500.12034/2455/1/25_2015_14_LouvenScholle.pdf