Emotinet: A Framework for the Development of Social Awareness Systems

This chapter describes Emotinet, a flexible and extensible framework for the development of social awareness systems. Emotinet was initially designed and developed to facilitate our explorations on how to augment a person’s work environment with information which enables his/her to feel the presence of intimate companions. The vehicle we deem to be appropriate for this situation is indirect communication. The presence we intend is based on the activities of these intimate people. A first social awareness system has already been developed by using Emotinet. This system is also described in this chapter. In short, with a certain periodicity the user is presented, on a peripheral user interface (windows desktop or digital picture frame), with a new collage composed of pictures indirectly triggered by their loved ones. In particular the pictures are triggered by the text they write and read, while working on their PCs.