Projektarbeiten aus den Studiengängen Informatik [B.Sc.], Wirtschaftsinformatik [B.Sc.], Techn. Informatik [B.Sc.], Interaktive Medien [B.A./B.Sc.]), Informatik [M.Sc], Business Information Systems [M.Sc.], Interaktive Mediensysteme [M.A.] an der
Fakultät-Informatik.
With technology steadily improving over the years, people are becoming more interconnected than ever and entertainment in form of applications are plentiful. Despite this, depression continues to rise among the general population.
According to the World Health Organization, over 322 million cases of depressive disorder were recorded in 2017, representing a rise of around 18.4\% over the past ten years.
Not only does depression negatively impact wellbeing, it may also lead to complications such as increased fatigue, decreased motivation or even suicide.
As a result, researchers have used computing technologies known as Affective Computing that seek to identify human emotions in order to combat mental disorders.
In "Remember to smile: Design of a mobile affective technology to help promote individual happiness through smiling", Moore, Galway and Donnelly propose a smartphone application using Affective Computing techniques to be used in a future study.
It is designed to encourage smiling, which has been shown to positively affect happiness and thus serves as an effective means to counteract depression.
The research objective of this report is to design and implement the aforementioned approach as an Android application that is capable of detecting smiles. After smiling, the user will be presented
with a questionnaire.
In order to render the application suitable for different kinds of studies, the application's components are designed to be as interchangeable as possible, allowing individual adjustments to be made with ease.
The linked report summarises the work of students at the University of Applied Sciences Augsburg, as part of a student project supervised by Dr. Leo Galway from Ulster University, Belfast.