I read an interesting article on VentureBeat today. A company called Emsense has developed a headset that measures a person’s “state-of-mind.” It produces a two-line graph. They claim one line measures the “emotion” of the wearer, and the other measures “intellectuctual thought.”
So what’s the most obvious application of this technology? Product research of course! The gimmick is that they’re offering companies a look at how people respond emotionally to their ads and products.
How does this benefit you? They’ll pay you to wear the headset and watch TV or play video games. If you live in California- currently the only place they have offices- you can go in, put on the headset and watch TV for 20 minutes, and they’ll give you $20.
A blog post from The Book of Guy tells us about the experience:
So I do this thing where I go to this office, I watch television commercials for about twenty minutes, take a five minute survey, and they give me $20. Great deal, really. Sometimes they let me play video games for an hour and a half, sometimes the video games aren’t even out yet, either way, I still get the $20. Being a broke person, just out of college studentdom and just before having a real job, I don’t mind going in to a place that’s willing to just hand me twenty dollars to watch television or play video games.
Certainly an interesting idea. Is this the future of market research? Sure beats focus groups.
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