Affective design describes the design of user interfaces in which emotional information is communicated to the computer from the user in a natural and comfortable way. The computer processes the emotional information and adapts or responds to try to improve the interaction in some way.[1] The notion of affective design emerged from the field of human–computer interaction (HCI),[2] specifically from the developing area of affective computing.[1] Affective design serves an important role in user experience (UX) as it contributes to the improvement of the user's personal condition in relation to the computing system.[3] The goals of affective design focus on providing users with an optimal, proactive experience. Amongst overlap with several fields, applications of affective design include ambient intelligence, human–robot interaction, and video games.

Background

Emotions are an integral part of the human experience, and thus, play a role in how users and consumers interact with interfaces and products.[4] Donald Norman, an academic in the field of human-centered design, explored the importance of emotion in design, coining the concept of user-centered design in the 1980s.[5] He discussed design heuristics and advocated for providing users with a pleasurable experience through the application of emotional design.[5] Similarly, Bødker, Christensen, and Jørgensen presented a definition of affective design that emphasizes the importance of considering current social and cultural influences when relating to human emotions.[6]

Along with the growth of human-computer interaction, the past few decades have seen an increase in the discussion of emotions in relation to design.[5] Research in recent years has looked at what affects our emotions as well as how emotions affect our mental and physical states.[4] Additionally, designers and researchers have explored how to elicit and map people’s emotions, ranging from positive to negative.[4] Affective design encompasses more than the functionality of a product as it emphasizes user experience and is concerned with the dynamics of how humans interact with the world.[4]

Affective design includes utilizing users’ emotions as data to guide technologies’ responses in addition to designing with predetermined elements intended to influence users’ emotions.[5] The growth in the number and diversity of users carries with it the challenge to tailor interfaces and products to each individual. Affective design offers the potential to provide a unique, adaptive response to each user’s emotion.[1] It has emerged as an intersection of functionality and pleasure, illustrating the significant influence of emotional components in technology and user experiences.[4]

Aims

Affective computing aims to construct affective interfaces[1] which are capable of providing certain emotional experiences for users.[7] Affective design attempts to understand the emotional relationships between users and products as well as how products communicate affectively through their physical features.[8] It aims to create artefacts capable of eliciting the most pleasurable experience possible for users, across all of their senses. Affective design works to create the optimal user experience by tailoring human-interactions to individual users in response to their emotional input. It promotes affective interaction through communication, positioning itself as a mediator between human input and the computer's output.[9]

The key challenge for affective design involves accurately identifying the user's affective needs, and, subsequently, the design of products that would address those needs.[10] Current research focuses on the measurement and analysis of human interactions towards affective design and the assessment of the corresponding affective design features.[10]

Applications

Emotion Stimulating Robot
Emotion Stimulating Robot

Ambient intelligence (AmI) involves a variety of processes, including aspects of affective design, to construct systems that proactively interact with the user.[11] It incorporates areas from computer science and engineering, including sensors, human-computer interfaces, and artificial intelligence, to construct an adaptive, intelligent user environment. Collecting information from the environment and calculating the user’s anticipated needs, AmI lies at the intersection of the Internet of things and artificial intelligence .[12] Applying affective design, AmI considers human desires and emotional responses. One way AmI processes human emotions is through facial expressions, which allows the technology to recognize user emotions and respond accordingly. These electronic environments provide the users with an aesthetic and pleasurable experience by enhancing human-product interactions.[13]

Human–robot interaction is another area in which affective design is applied, specifically with emotional robots. Recognizing human emotions, emotional robots are aware of the user’s emotions and engage in an emotional interaction with the user.[14] Emotional robots are designed to mimic human emotions and cognition. They analyze the user’s emotions by gathering data through various methods, including facial recognition, body language, and physiological signals, and then they exhibit a behavioral response.[14] One example of an emotional robot is Erica, developed by Hiroshi Ishiguro and his team at Osaka University. Erica is an intelligent robot capable of carrying out a conversation with people and expressing emotions.[15]

Video games serve as an immersive form of entertainment that can apply affective design in their development. Emotions impact the user’s engagement and relationship with the video game, prompting designers to consider affective design in their creation of video games.[16] Affective gaming, for example, explores how video games can analyze the player's emotions and change game features accordingly.[16] This has the potential to increase the personalization and adaptability of the games with the intention to increase user interest and commitment.[9]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Reynolds, C. and Picard, R. (2001) Designing for Affective Interactions. In Proceedings of 9th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, 5–10 August 2001, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. [online], available: http://vismod.media.mit.edu/pub/tech-reports/TR-541.pdf
  2. ↑ Norman, D. A. (1986). Design principles for human-computer interfaces. In D. E. Berger, K. Pezdek, & W. P. Banks (Eds.). Applications of cognitive psychology: Problem solving, education, and computing. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
  3. ↑ Stephanidis, Constantine; Margherita, Antona (2013). Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction: Design Methods, Tools, and Interaction Techniques for e-Inclusion. Dordrecht: Springer. p. 567. ISBN 9783642391873.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Emotions and affect in human factors and human-computer interaction. Myounghoon Jeon. London, United Kingdom. 2017. ISBN 978-0-12-801879-8. OCLC 982491886.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link)
  5. 1 2 3 4 Triberti, Stefano; Chirico, Alice; La Rocca, Gemma; Riva, Giuseppe (2017). "Developing Emotional Design: Emotions as Cognitive Processes and their Role in the Design of Interactive Technologies". Frontiers in Psychology. 8: 1773. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01773. ISSN 1664-1078. PMC 5640767. PMID 29062300.
  6. ↑ Bødker, Mads; Christensen, Martin S.; Jørgensen, Anker Helms (23 June 2003). "Understanding affective design in a late-modernity perspective". Proceedings of the 2003 international conference on Designing pleasurable products and interfaces. DPPI '03. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 136–137. doi:10.1145/782896.782931. ISBN 978-1-58113-652-4. S2CID 9911180.
  7. ↑ McCarthy, J. and Wright, P. (2004). What is enjoyment doing to HCI? In ECCE'12: Proceedings of the 11th European Conference on Cognitive. European Association of Cognitive Ergonomics, Le Chesney, France. pp. 11–12
  8. ↑ Carliner, S. (2000) "Physical, Cognitive, and Affective: A Three-Part Framework for Information Design” [online], available: https://web.archive.org/web/20061231230832/http://saulcarliner.home.att.net/id/newmodel.htm [accessed 10 January 2007]
  9. 1 2 Ng, Y. Y.; Khong, C. W.; Thwaites, H. (1 January 2012). "A Review of Affective Design towards Video Games". Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences. The World Conference on Design, Arts and Education (DAE-2012), May 1–3, 2012, Antalya, Turkey. 51: 687–691. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.08.225. ISSN 1877-0428.
  10. 1 2 Jacko, Julie (2011). Human-Computer Interaction: Users and Applications: 14th International Conference, HCI International 2011, Orlando, FL, USA, July 9-14, 2011, Proceedings, Part 4. Heidelberg: Springer. p. 257. ISBN 9783642216183.
  11. ↑ Butz, Andreas (2010), "User Interfaces and HCI for Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments", Handbook of Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments, Boston, MA: Springer US, pp. 3–31, Bibcode:2010hais.book..535B, doi:10.1007/978-0-387-93808-0_20, ISBN 978-0-387-93807-3, retrieved 4 February 2023
  12. ↑ Mukherjee, Srishti (26 January 2022). "What is Ambient Intelligence?". Analytics India Magazine. Retrieved 4 February 2023.
  13. ↑ Mühlhäuser, Max; Ferscha, Alois; Aitenbichler, Erwin (2008). Constructing Ambient Intelligence. Berlin: Springer Science+Business Media. p. 301. ISBN 978-3540853787.
  14. 1 2 Chen, Luefeng; Wu, Min; Pedrycz, Witold; Hirota, Kaoru (14 November 2020), "Emotional Human-Robot Interaction Systems", Emotion Recognition and Understanding for Emotional Human-Robot Interaction Systems, Studies in Computational Intelligence, Cham: Springer International Publishing, vol. 926, pp. 215–222, doi:10.1007/978-3-030-61577-2_12, ISBN 978-3-030-61576-5, S2CID 228891315, retrieved 7 February 2023
  15. ↑ McCurry, Justin (31 December 2015). "Erica, the 'most beautiful and intelligent' android, leads Japan's robot revolution". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 7 February 2023.
  16. 1 2 Ng, Yiing Y’ng; Khong, Chee Weng; Nathan, Robert Jeyakumar (4 June 2018). "Evaluating Affective User-Centered Design of Video Games Using Qualitative Methods". International Journal of Computer Games Technology. 2018: 1–13. doi:10.1155/2018/3757083. ISSN 1687-7047.
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