Affective Interaction – by Yoseph Samuel Sultan 520976
Affect Interaction falls under the umbrella of Affect Computing. This is the study of computational systems that can be aware of and respond to human emotions. [Höök] This includes systems that intend to evoke certain emotions as well. Humans are not only cognitive beings, but emotional ones, which is why it is important to consider emotions in creating an environment that seems natural and usable. Due to the length restrictions of this report, carefully selecting what to include and leave out was very important. In the next paragraph, Emotional Theory will be introduced as this provides the essential foundation for work in this field. After that, some of the major challenges posed by Affect Interaction are discussed. Following is a presentation of some real-world applications that allow us to see the theory applied. Finally, there is a conclusion rounding off this article and presenting personal views on the matter.
Affect Interaction is a multidisciplinary task. Computer scientists who try to create such systems have gathered information about human emotion from fields such as medicine, neurology, psychology and even philosophy. One of the problems with implementing such a system is that the theory behind still remains very abstract. Furthermore, there is no unity among the community as to which emotional model describes humans the best. The bridge between current theory and implementation is still huge. All though many of the suggested theories are grand and attempt to encapsulate everything, when creating practical/useful affect interaction systems, these theories should only be used as inspiration and a source of ideas. Not as a model for implementation. For a more detailed discussion on various emotional models, I refer the reader to [Scherer 2002] for a good review of the most popular models.
There are several challenges that must be addressed before an emotionally interactive system can be created. One of the major challenges is to bridge the gap between ‘the constructive rational nature’ of software and the ‘interpretative subjective complexity’ of a user’s personal experience. At the end of the day, users do not naturally rationalize about their daily emotions, that is part of what makes them emotions. This level of unconscious involvement leads to very subjective and personal behavior. Two people may react in two completely different emotional ways to the very same stimulus. This tells us that Affect Interaction design must be very user-centered. Regardless of whether the universe has a unifying explanation to all peoples emotions, because we currently don’t, a practical system will only be developed when the design is user-centered. This point cannot be stressed enough. There is a very big difference between reality of emotion/affect and useful practical implementations of theory.
When discussing topics such as affect interaction, it is very useful after a point to step back and see what is actually ‘out there’. It is very easy to be caught up in the very interesting philosophical and psychological discussion, but we must not forget our drive, which is to create systems that are useful to users and improve interaction. One such system was proposed by [Ståhl 2005]. This application attempts to provide emotive expression in mobile messaging. Again, if this was perfectly achieved it would be an application yearned for by many. The emphasis of the application was the use of “sub-symbolic expressions; colors, shapes and animations, for expressing emotions in an open-ended way”. [Ståhl 2005] The picture below shows some of the emotions expressed by the system. Another application that attempts to achieve affect interaction is another mobile application called eMoto[Sundström 2005]. This applications aims to be guide via user gestures. These gestures are measures via an extended stylus accelerometer and a pressure sensor added. On general both these applications do not perform successfully, but act as stepping stones to move the entire field forward.
Personally, I cannot deny the potential brought on by successful affect interaction development. However, I do remain skeptically as to the feasibility of the task. Some have suggested that the fully understanding of human emotion is an impossible task. On the contrary I do not believe the ‘full understanding of human emotion’ is required to develop a useful system that integrates information about emotion. In my words I would like to say ‘a useful understanding of human emotion’ is what is required. By useful I mean as simplistic or as complicated as required, but where the focus remains on the user and system usability. After all nature inspired design is not about replicating natures actions, but only getting inspiration there from. In the same manner, we should learn about human emotion, and scientifically experiment and test, in order to create systems that are functional. I believe that is one of the elements that distinguishes a computer scientist from a philosophical theorist. We must take theories, learn, adapt, change, truncate and produce a deliverable that is functional. This is not to say that further research on theoretical aspects is not necessary or even that is it not the role of computer scientist. It is necessary and computer scientist should be involved. The only point made here is that there are two fronts to the problem. Theoretical which relates to reality, and practical which relate to functional system . Both must be worked on and both must be advanced.
by Yoseph Samuel Sultan 520976
References:
Boehner, K., DePaula, R., Dourish, P., and Sengers P., 2005. Affect: From Information to Interaction. Critical computing Conference 2005, Århus, Denmark http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1094570&coll=portal&dl=ACM&CFID=66824627&CFTOKEN=24952427
Ståhl, A. (2006) Designing for Emotional Expressivity, Licenciate Thesis, Institute of Design, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden. Chapter 4 (and for those extra interested, Chapter 3): http://www.sics.se/~annas/lic/Binder1.pdf
Höök, K (2004) User-Centred Design and Evaluation of Affective Interfaces, In: Zs. Ruttkay, C. Pelachaud (Eds.), From Brows till Trust: Evaluating Embodied Conversational Agents, Kluwer, 2004. http://www.sics.se/~kia/papers/hook1.pdf
Sundström, P. (2005) Exploring the Affective Loop, Licentiate Thesis, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden, Chapter 3: http://www.sics.se/~petra/eMoto/licen.pdf
Anna Ståhl,
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