CMU Student’s Web Site Keys in on Moods
By Mackenzie Carpenter, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Feb. 7–It’s February, the weather stinks, and your moods — and those of your spouse or co-workers — are swinging more than the Golden Gate Bridge during a windstorm.
Before the Internet, you needed a ring to broadcast your mood.
You can hang on for dear life until spring comes, or you can log on to MoodJam.org, a Web site created by a Carnegie Mellon University computer science student that allows people to record their moods throughout the day using words and color — and share them within workgroups, circles of friends or family members who live far apart.
While the site is still something of a work in progress, a “gadget” version of MoodJam.org — which can be installed on a homepage — won last year in two categories of the Google Gadget Awards, a student competition sponsored by Google Inc.
“We thought it might be nice to be more aware of each other’s moods, since we work together in close quarters,” said Ian Li, a Ph.D. student in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute. “The hope was, if we became more aware of what others were going through on a particular day, or time of day, we’d react better to each other.”
Currently, the site is fairly basic: after logging on, the user sees a series of color bars that, when touched by a cursor, yield words describing feelings during a particular time of day. After registering, the user can click on a color — or a pattern of colors — and write in a box what kind of mood he or she is in. All are anonymous, and some are fairly predictable: “Cold, cranky and don’t want to go outside,” read one red-themed post, dated at around 5:30 p.m. Monday. Another, pink and red-striped, was more intriguing: “Am in love with my friend’s sister.”
Currently, more than 1,000 people have registered their moods on MoodJam, Mr. Li said, although he’s still working on an application that would allow usergroups to share smaller versions, within one workspace, for example.
His is one of a growing number of Internet sites that allow people to monitor their feelings with just a few taps on the keyboard or, for that matter, obtain any kind of personal feedback. Weight Watchers Online allows users to record what they ate and share frustration with fellow dieters, while MyTherapyNet.com, eGetgoing.com and HelpHorizons.com allow patients to “talk” to therapists online via instant messaging.
Lifejournal.com sells “journaling” software that includes a “daily pulse” allowing you to monitor your moods, and a service called MoodViews is assessing people’s moods in the blogosphere by tracking the “mood label” people tag their posts on LiveJournal.com. So far, no big surprises: the label “drunk” spikes during the weekend. “Stressed” peaks near the winter holidays and ebbs during the summer, while “flirty” and “lonely” pop up around Valentine’s Day.
While it all seems all shiny and new, cognitive behavioral therapists often recommend that patients record their moods over a period of time, usually with handwritten journals, as a way of asserting more control over their feelings.
“For some patients, when they become aware of what their mood is, and attribute it to an external cause, that can be a benefit,” said Dr. Rolf Jacob, professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. People who are impulsive, who act before they think, “would benefit from a little more self-consciousness.”
On the other hand, those who suffer from performance anxiety might become too aware of what they are feeling and become even more self-conscious or paralyzed, he added.
Dr. Jacobs has used mood recording in his work, including one study on the effects of mood on blood pressure in the 1980s, when people were outfitted with blood pressure monitoring cuffs that would go off every 30 minutes, prompting them to record their moods in a diary.
“Whatever you do to learn more about yourself is potentially, inherently therapeutic,” he said.
WAYS TO TRACK YOUR MOOD: Web sites for mood monitoring:
–www.moodjam.org: Register as a user and post your moods online.
–www.livejournal.com: Open source technology that allows users to connect with each other online and tag posts with “mood labels”
–www.lifejournal.com: Sells “journaling” software that includes a “daily pulse” feature
–www.blinkee.com/Mood: Sells classic 1970s-era mood rings and an update “blinking” version using LED light technology.
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