DeepFlow: Detecting optimal user experience from physiological data using deep neural networks

Flow is an affective state of optimal experience, total immersion and high productivity. While often associated with (professional) sports, it is a valuable information in several scenarios ranging from work environments to user experience evaluations, and we expect it to be a potential reward signal for human-in-the-loop reinforcement learning systems. Traditionally, flow has been assessed through questionnaires which prevents its use in online, real-time environments. In this work, we present our findings towards estimating a user's flow state based on physiological signals measured using wearable devices. We conducted a study with participants playing the game Tetris in varying difficulty levels, leading to boredom, stress, and flow. Using an end-to-end deep learning architecture, we achieve an accuracy of 67.50% in recognizing high flow vs. low flow states and 49.23% in distinguishing all three affective states boredom, flow, and stress.