ch6

• Emotional interaction


  Concerned with how we feel and react when interacting with technologies
• Affective computing


  Improving with better recognition software and machine learning algorithms
• Emotions


  • What makes us happy, sad, annoyed, anxious, frustrated, motivated, delirious, and so on
• Translating emotions into different aspects of the user experience
• Why people become emotionally attached to certain products


  For instance, virtual pets
• Can social robots help


  Reduce loneliness and improve well-being
• How to change human behavior

  Through the use of emotive feedback
• Why has this simple way of obtaining visitor feedback been so effective?
• Pulling at the heart strings with an emotive message
• Designing an interface to match or change how we are feeling


  1. Should an interface be designed to improve how we feel?

  2. How would you design an interface for when someone is happy, angry, sad, bored, or focused?
• How emotions affect behavior

  And behavior affects emotions
• Automatic (affect) emotions


  Rapid and dissipate quickly
• Conscious emotions


  Develop slowly and take a long time to go
• Ortony et al. (2005) model of emotional design


  • Our emotional state changes how we think
  • When frightened or angry, we focus narrowly and our bodies respond by tensing muscles and sweating
  • When happy, we are less focused and our bodies relax
• Visceral design


  Making products look, feel, and sound good
• Behavioral design


  About use, and it equates with traditional values of usability
• Reflective design


  About considering the meaning and personal value of a product
• Analyzing a swatch watch design

  • Cultural images and graphical elements designed at the reflective level
  • Affordances of use at the behavioral level
  • Brilliant colors and wild design attract user's attention at the visceral level
• Expressive interfaces


  • Provide reassuring feedback that can be both informative and fun
  • Can also be intrusive, however, causing people to become annoyed and even angry
• Emotional icons in the 1980s


  • Smiling apple face
• Impersonal but aesthetically-pleasing icons nowadays


  • Beachball
• The Nest thermostat design

  • Minimalist and aesthetically-pleasing
  • Round face and simple dial
  • Large font and numbers
• Earlier thermostat designs


  • Utilitarian and dull
• Microsoft's 'At Home with Bob' software


  • 3D metaphors based on familiar places
  • Agents in the guise of pets (such as a bunny or dog) were included to talk to the user
• Many people did not like the idea of Bob, so it never made it as a product
• Microsoft's Clippy


  • Was disliked by so many
• IKEA's Anna


  • Appeared as a virtual agent
  • Blinked, moved her lips and head to suggest facial expressions
• Frustrating interfaces


  • When an application doesn't work properly or crashes
  • When a system doesn't do what the user wants it to do
  • When a user's expectations are not met
  • When a system does not provide sufficient information to enable the user to know what to do
  • When error messages pop up that are vague, obtuse, or condemning
  • When the appearance of an interface is garish, noisy, gimmicky, or patronizing
  • When a system requires users to carry out too many steps to perform a task, only to discover that a mistake was made earlier and that they need to start all over again
• Error messages


  • Should avoid using terms like FATAL, INVALID, or BAD
  • Should provide audio warnings
  • Should avoid UPPERCASE and long code numbers
  • Should be precise rather than vague
  • Should provide context-sensitive help
• Dilemma: Should computers say they're sorry?

  1. Should emulate human etiquette

  2. How sincere would they think the computer was being?

  3. How else should computers communicate with users?
• Dilemma: Should voice assistants teach kids good manners?


  1. Many children talk to Alexa as if she was their friend

  2. They also learn that it is not necessary to say please and thank you to her when asking questions

  3. Is this lack of using etiquette a problem?

  4. Would it transfer over to real life situations?

  5. How much parental control should voice assistants be given?

  6. Would children find it weird or creepy that their Alexa (who is their friend) nags them to clean their teeth?
• Affective Computing


  Concerned with how to use computers to recognize and express emotions as humans do
• Emotional AI


  Aims to automate the measurement of feelings and behavior using AI to infer them from facial expressions and voice
• Techniques used in affective computing and emotional AI


  • Cameras for measuring facial expressions
  • Biosensors placed on fingers or palms to measure GSR
  • Affective expression in speech (for example, intonation, pitch, and loudness)
  • Body movement and gestures using accelerometers and motion capture systems
• Classification of emotions


  Six core expressions typically measured: Sadness, disgust, fear, anger, contempt, and joy
• How emotional data is used

  • Website can adapt its ad, movie storyline, or content to match user's emotional state
  • If system used in a car, it might detect an angry driver and suggest they take a deep breath
  • Eye-tracking, finger pulse, speech, and words/phrases also analyzed when tweeting or posting to Facebook
• Indirect emotion detection


  Used more to infer or predict someone's behavior
• Do you think it is ethical that technology can read your emotions from your facial expressions or from your tweets?
• Persuasive technologies and behavioral change

  Interactive computing systems designed to change people's attitudes and behaviors
• Nintendo's Pocket Pikachu


  • Designed to motivate children to be more physically active on a regular basis
  • Owner of the digital pet that 'lives' in the device is required to walk, run, or jump
  • If owner does not exercise, the virtual pet becomes angry and refuses to play anymore