New App Lets Your Smartphone Know How You're Feeling
There are a lot of smartphone applications which help you stay healthy by measuring your heart beats, help you take care of your diet and make sure you stay fit, but none (that I know of) that can ensure that your mind is in the right place. StudentLife is a new app for Android that will help your phone notice whenever you are depressed or lonely.
StudentLife was created at the Dartmouth College by professor Andrew Campbell and his team. In order to get its results, the app takes into account a wide array of factors such as the user's movement, the amount of time spent in one place, the frequency and duration of their calls or the sleep hours and duration. The trial data was gathered from 48 students at the university, and the researchers noticed that the app's results correlated to the performance of the students in classes.
According to the app's findings, depression is mostly related to lack of sleep and a low number of conversations, while most lonely are those who don't often engage in physical activities. One of the most interesting results revealed that the students' performance in classes was tied to their social interactions more than class attendance. I venture to guess that it also strongly depends on their entourage.
At this moment the app is specifically tailored for students and the academic staff, StudentLife can easily be utilized for other purposes such as testing it in a regular workplace. The one thing we don't know is what will the application be able to do with the information except for storing it.
For more information, you can check out the study's documentation here.
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