Minutes of the Face to Face Meeting of the W3C Emotion Incubator Group

Munich, 26-27 March 2007

Present: Marc Schröder (Chair, Scribe), Hannes Pirker, Jean-Claude Martin, Felix Burkhardt, Amaryllis Raouzaiou and Paraskevi Tzouveli (jointly standing in for Kostas Karpouzis), Björn Schuller (Host), Enrico Zovato, Jianhua Tao, Christian Peter


Table of Contents

Framing the group's activities: Identifying target users

Revisions of the structure of the requirements document

Relation of use case requirements to existing markup specifications

Prospects of continuing the group's work in the recommendation track

Publications and Final Report

Next meetings

Action List

Appendix: Lists compiled at the meeting

List of relevant emotion descriptions from emotion theories

Representations of emotion in current affective computing systems




Framing the group's activities: Identifying target users

Christian: we should not try to please everyone, but narrow down. E.g., “technological context”.

Jean-Claude: we need a language which is simple enough, covering the main requirements.

Marc: we should show how our language is capable of representing scientifically valid emotion descriptions, to gain credibility.

Hannes: We have not yet talked much about the emotions themselves; mostly about additional information needed. That is probably inevitable, because there is no agreement on how to represent emotions. But we should ask ourselves: what would be the added value for someone to use this coding scheme?


ACTION: Jean-Claude, Christian and Jianhua to add links to example for each point in the requirements document: link to a use case example where this feature is required, by 27 April


Revisions of the structure of the requirements document

A number of smaller modifications were discussed and agreed. These include, notably:


ACTION: Marc to restructure (again) the consolidated use case requirements as agreed, by 13 April.


Relation of use case requirements to existing markup specifications

Presentations:


ACTION: Marc to collect all slides and upload them in the restricted space of the emoxg group


Volunteers to discuss existing ML in view of our requirements document (after it has been restructured again by Marc):


Format of this discussion:

For each requirements section, point to the language element which (partially) addresses the requirement; possibly, a short comment.


Deadline: 4 June (i.e., before the next f2f)


Prospects of continuing the group's work in the recommendation track

We would like to see this work continue; either as a separate WG or as part of MMI or Voice Browser group. Paolo Baggia recommends we become part of an existing WG.


ACTION: Marc to liaise with W3C representatives about options and consequences of this kind of choice


Interest to continue from


Other W3C members might be interested in joining a standardisation effort for an emotion markup. Various ideas were discussed about whom to contact.




Publications and Final Report

Final Report will be the main topic of the f2f in Paris.

Ethical issues: The Final Report should contain a section on ethical issues.


Steps towards a Final Report:


ACTION: Felix to formulate a number of examples for some types of emotion markup before the next phone meeting



Publications:



Next meetings


Next phone meeting: 23 April, 11:00 UTC (1pm in Germany)


Felix suggested that we make much more use of the IRC facility in future phone meetings. Felix reported of other W3C groups he has been in: people basically type (a short version of) what they say. All present expressed that it should be done like this in the future – it will help understanding each other and it will simplify the scribe's job.



Date of next f2f: 7 June 2007, Paris. Many of the participants need to check if they can come.


Action List

(copied from above)

ACTION: Marc to restructure (again) the consolidated use case requirements as agreed, by 13 April.


ACTION: Jean-Claude, Christian and Jianhua to add links to example for each point in the requirements document: link to a use case example where this feature is required, by 27 April


ACTION: Marc to collect all slides and upload them in the restricted space of the emoxg group


ACTION: volunteers to discuss existing ML in view of our requirements document by 4 June


ACTION: Felix to formulate a number of examples for some types of emotion markup before the next phone meeting


ACTION: volunteers to contribute to publications, before the respective deadlines


ACTION: Hannes to ask Tanja to point us to a short list of the most important emotion theories and associated emotion descriptions that we should definitely cover in view of a technological context.


ACTION: Hannes to invite Tanja to the f2f in Paris.


Appendix: Lists compiled at the meeting


List of relevant emotion descriptions from emotion theories



We think it should be possible to express the above in the markup language.


We should ask a psychologist for feedback on this; for example Tanja Bänziger. The goal is to point out obvious ommissions, important things we may have missed.


ACTION: Hannes to ask Tanja to point us to a short list of the most important emotion theories and associated emotion descriptions that we should definitely cover in view of a technological context.


ACTION: Hannes to invite Tanja to the f2f in Paris.



Emotion definition according to Scherer: multiple components:

  • physiological arousal

  • motor expression

  • action tendencies

  • subjective feeling


We do not attempt to define these properties for the emotional states annotated in EmotionML. Instead, an application should define the kinds of properties meaningful to it.





Representations of emotion in current affective computing systems


We could start the final report with this kind of overview – it motivates why it would be inappropriate to try and come up with one description of emotions only.