I was notified today that I will receive funding from the College of Arts and Sciences for my Experiential Learning Fellowship proposal. I will post more on this later, but here is a quick snippet from my proposal:

"Website usability can be analyzed by measuring affective responses in the user, such as heart rate, galvanic skin response, and skin temperature. These variables provide information about the level of physiological arousal and parasympathetic functioning of the participant. Facial expressions can be filmed and affects coded based on the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). In the past, capturing data for this type of analysis involved expensive, complex setups in a lab environment, but recent technological advances have lowered the price of these tools to the point of individual accessibility and perhaps more importantly, portability."

I will be purchasing a galvanic skin response meter, a heart rate monitor, TechSmith Morae, and a MacBook Pro. I am eager to get started testing out the equipment!

Last week I attended the World Usability Day at the Cleveland Museum of Art (thanks to Brian Gray for keeping me in the loop!) where I met some people doing usability analysis. Kent State had an eye tracking monitor on display. They collect very useful data. Getting one of those monitors in my next goal.