EmoFit: Affect Monitoring System for Sedentary Jobs

Abstract: Emotional and physical well-being at workplace is important for a positive work environment and higher productivity. Jobs such as software programming lead to a sedentary lifestyle and require high interaction with computers. Working at the same job for years can cause a feeling of intellectual stagnation and lack of drive. Many employees experience lack of motivation, mild to extreme depression due to reasons such as aversion towards job responsibilities and incompatibility with coworkers or boss. This research proposed an affect monitoring system EmoFit that would play the role of psychological and physical health trainer. The day to day computer activity and body language was analyzed to detect the physical and emotional well-being of the user. Keystrokes, activity interruptions, eye tracking, facial expressions, body posture and speech were monitored to gauge the users health. The system also provided activities such as at-desk exercise and stress relief game and motivational quotes in an attempt to promote users well-being. The experimental results and positive feedback from test subjects showed that EmoFit would help improve emotional and physical well-being at jobs that involve significant computer usage.