Affective design

Last updated

Affective design describes the design of products, services, and user interfaces that aim to evoke intended emotional responses from consumers, ultimately improving customer satisfaction. [1] It is often regarded within the domain of technology interaction and computing, 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. [2] The notion of affective design emerged from the field of human–computer interaction (HCI), [3] specifically from the developing area of affective computing. [2] 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. [4] Decision-making, brand loyalty, and consumer connections have all been associated with the integration of affective design. [5] [6] 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.

Contents

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. [7] 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. [8] He discussed design heuristics and advocated for providing users with a pleasurable experience through the application of emotional design. [8] According to Norman, there are three levels of emotional processing that influence the user’s affective experience: visceral design, behavioural design, and reflective design. [9]

To cater to all three levels of emotional responses, designers should consider both a product’s appearance and its usability. [10]

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. [12]

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. [8] Research in recent years has looked at what affects our emotions as well as how emotions affect our mental and physical states. [7] Additionally, designers and researchers have explored how to elicit and map people’s emotions, ranging from positive to negative. [7] 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. [7]

Affective design includes utilizing users’ emotions as data to guide technologies’ responses in addition to designing with predetermined elements intended to influence users’ emotions. [8] 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. [2] It has emerged as an intersection of functionality and pleasure, illustrating the significant influence of emotional components in technology and user experiences. [7]

Aims

Affective computing aims to construct affective interfaces [2] which are capable of providing certain emotional experiences for users. [13] Affective design attempts to understand the emotional relationships between users and products as well as how products communicate affectively through their physical features. [14] 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. [15] The effectiveness of affective design is measured with reference to feeling discrepancy, which defines the disparity between the target customer's emotional response and the actual emotions experienced by the user. [16] Design that generates low feeling discrepancy is regarded as impactful affective design. [16]

Another aim of affective design is increasing customer retention by creating memorable user experiences and ensuring brand loyalty. [1] The integration of affective design and the subsequent emotional response elicited in customers has been shown to positively impact attachment, loyalty, and long-term commitment to the brand. [17] [5] This aim of affective design is grounded in the experience economy theory, suggesting that consumer engagement should occur at the emotional level. [18] By creating positive affective responses, brands generate memorable experiences for product users, improving commercial success. [19] This leads to positive sale-driving behaviours in consumers, such as spreading positive word-of-mouth, price insensitivity, and repurchasing. [20]

Challenges

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. [21] Current research focuses on the measurement and analysis of human interactions towards affective design and the assessment of the corresponding affective design features. [21]

Another challenge for affective design is balancing the emotional and utilitarian aspects of product design. [22] Prioritising emotional value over usability can affect users’ satisfaction with a given product if it fails to meet their functional expectations. [9] Conversely, the overemphasis on product functionality can detract from an emotionally positive experience, leading to decreased memorability of use and brand loyalty. [9] Therefore, effective design should encompass both product functionality and generate positive affective responses to create an optimal user experience.

Notably, while striking a balance between usability and affective design is important, generating strong emotional responses has been found to mitigate some negative experiences stemming from a lack of functionality. According to Norman, customer satisfaction at the emotional level often transcends functional inconveniences, and positive reflective memories can mitigate the negative effect of the initial experience. [9] Emotion-centered design has also been found to have a more significant impact on a product’s success than its functionality. [9] One example is the introduction of the colourful casing to Apple’s iMac, which, by appealing to the visceral level of emotional processing, improved the product’s sales despite the hardware components remaining mostly unchanged. [23]

Direct measures of users’ emotional states present another challenge for affective design. Products and interfaces that incorporate affective computing into their design, specifically to create user experiences that adapt to the emotional state of the user, often rely on indirect measures, such as physiological arousal. [9] However, the use of biological markers, such as heart rate, blood pressure, or respiratory rate, only provides an indirect measure of affective states, which can be influenced by various external factors. [9]

Applications

Emotion Stimulating Robot Maker Faire, Berlin (BL7C0099).jpg
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. [24] 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 . [25] 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. [26]

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. [27] 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. [27] 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. [28]

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. [29] Affective gaming, for example, explores how video games can analyze the player's emotions and change game features accordingly. [29] This has the potential to increase the personalization and adaptability of the games with the intention to increase user interest and commitment. [15] It has been recognised as a potential solution to the issue of games providing an unbalanced player experience, often oscillating between excessively difficult and overly simplistic gameplay. [30] Researchers suggest that game adaptability can also play a crucial role in facilitating a state of flow in players, which has been considered an integral part of enjoyable gaming experiences. [30] Biofeedback and physiological arousal measures have been suggested as tools for games to adapt the gameplay, thus increasing player satisfaction by minimising frustration and maintaining an optimal level of challenge. [31]

See also

Related Research Articles

Affective computing is the study and development of systems and devices that can recognize, interpret, process, and simulate human affects. It is an interdisciplinary field spanning computer science, psychology, and cognitive science. While some core ideas in the field may be traced as far back as to early philosophical inquiries into emotion, the more modern branch of computer science originated with Rosalind Picard's 1995 paper on affective computing and her book Affective Computing published by MIT Press. One of the motivations for the research is the ability to give machines emotional intelligence, including to simulate empathy. The machine should interpret the emotional state of humans and adapt its behavior to them, giving an appropriate response to those emotions.

Interaction design, often abbreviated as IxD, is "the practice of designing interactive digital products, environments, systems, and services." While interaction design has an interest in form, its main area of focus rests on behavior. Rather than analyzing how things are, interaction design synthesizes and imagines things as they could be. This element of interaction design is what characterizes IxD as a design field, as opposed to a science or engineering field.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to human–computer interaction:

<i>Emotional Design</i> Book by American writer Donald Norman

Emotional Design is both the title of a book by Donald Norman and of the concept it represents.

The user experience (UX) is how a user interacts with and experiences a product, system or service. It includes a person's perceptions of utility, ease of use, and efficiency. Improving user experience is important to most companies, designers, and creators when creating and refining products because negative user experience can diminish the use of the product and, therefore, any desired positive impacts; conversely, designing toward profitability often conflicts with ethical user experience objectives and even causes harm. User experience is subjective. However, the attributes that make up the user experience are objective.

Human-centered computing (HCC) studies the design, development, and deployment of mixed-initiative human-computer systems. It is emerged from the convergence of multiple disciplines that are concerned both with understanding human beings and with the design of computational artifacts. Human-centered computing is closely related to human-computer interaction and information science. Human-centered computing is usually concerned with systems and practices of technology use while human-computer interaction is more focused on ergonomics and the usability of computing artifacts and information science is focused on practices surrounding the collection, manipulation, and use of information.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ambient intelligence</span>

Ambient intelligence (AmI) is a term used in computing to refer to electronic environments that are both sensitive and responsive to the presence of people. The term is generally applied to consumer electronics, telecommunications, and computing.

In artificial intelligence, an embodied agent, also sometimes referred to as an interface agent, is an intelligent agent that interacts with the environment through a physical body within that environment. Agents that are represented graphically with a body, for example a human or a cartoon animal, are also called embodied agents, although they have only virtual, not physical, embodiment. A branch of artificial intelligence focuses on empowering such agents to interact autonomously with human beings and the environment. Mobile robots are one example of physically embodied agents; Ananova and Microsoft Agent are examples of graphically embodied agents. Embodied conversational agents are embodied agents that are capable of engaging in conversation with one another and with humans employing the same verbal and nonverbal means that humans do.

User experience design defines the experience a user would go through when interacting with a company, its services, and its products. User experience design is a user centered design approach because it considers the user's experience when using a product or platform. Research, data analysis, and test results drive design decisions in UX design rather than aesthetic preferences and opinions. Unlike user interface design, which focuses solely on the design of a computer interface, UX design encompasses all aspects of a user's perceived experience with a product or website, such as its usability, usefulness, desirability, brand perception, and overall performance. UX design is also an element of the customer experience (CX), and encompasses all aspects and stages of a customer's experience and interaction with a company.

Gender HCI is a subfield of human-computer interaction that focuses on the design and evaluation of interactive systems for humans. The specific emphasis in gender HCI is on variations in how people of different genders interact with computers.

An Emotion Markup Language has first been defined by the W3C Emotion Incubator Group (EmoXG) as a general-purpose emotion annotation and representation language, which should be usable in a large variety of technological contexts where emotions need to be represented. Emotion-oriented computing is gaining importance as interactive technological systems become more sophisticated. Representing the emotional states of a user or the emotional states to be simulated by a user interface requires a suitable representation format; in this case a markup language is used.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mobile interaction</span>

Mobile interaction is the study of interaction between mobile users and computers. Mobile interaction is an aspect of human–computer interaction that emerged when computers became small enough to enable mobile usage, around the 1990s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Human–computer interaction</span> Academic discipline studying the relationship between computer systems and their users

Human–computer interaction (HCI) is research in the design and the use of computer technology, which focuses on the interfaces between people (users) and computers. HCI researchers observe the ways humans interact with computers and design technologies that allow humans to interact with computers in novel ways. A device that allows interaction between human being and a computer is known as a "Human-computer Interface (HCI)".

Sonic interaction design is the study and exploitation of sound as one of the principal channels conveying information, meaning, and aesthetic/emotional qualities in interactive contexts. Sonic interaction design is at the intersection of interaction design and sound and music computing. If interaction design is about designing objects people interact with, and such interactions are facilitated by computational means, in sonic interaction design, sound is mediating interaction either as a display of processes or as an input medium.

User experience evaluation (UXE) or user experience assessment (UXA) refers to a collection of methods, skills and tools utilized to uncover how a person perceives a system before, during and after interacting with it. It is non-trivial to assess user experience since user experience is subjective, context-dependent and dynamic over time. For a UXA study to be successful, the researcher has to select the right dimensions, constructs, and methods and target the research for the specific area of interest such as game, transportation, mobile, etc.

Affective haptics is the emerging area of research which focuses on the study and design of devices and systems that can elicit, enhance, or influence the emotional state of a human by means of sense of touch. The research field is originated with the Dzmitry Tsetserukou and Alena Neviarouskaya papers on affective haptics and real-time communication system with rich emotional and haptic channels. Driven by the motivation to enhance social interactivity and emotionally immersive experience of users of real-time messaging, virtual, augmented realities, the idea of reinforcing (intensifying) own feelings and reproducing (simulating) the emotions felt by the partner was proposed. Four basic haptic (tactile) channels governing our emotions can be distinguished:

  1. physiological changes
  2. physical stimulation
  3. social touch
  4. emotional haptic design.

The aesthetic–usability effect describes a paradox that people perceive more aesthetic designs as much more intuitive than those considered to be less aesthetically pleasing. The effect has been observed in several experiments and has significant implications regarding the acceptance, use, and performance of a design. Usability and aesthetics are the two most important factors in assessing the overall user experience for an application. Usability and aesthetics are judged by a user's reuse expectations, and then their post-use, or experienced, final judgement. A user's cognitive style can influence how they interact with and perceive an application, which in turn can influence their judgement of the application.

Feminist HCI is a subfield of human-computer interaction (HCI) that applies feminist theory, critical theory and philosophy to social topics in HCI, including scientific objectivity, ethical values, data collection, data interpretation, reflexivity, and unintended consequences of HCI software. The term was originally used in 2010 by Shaowen Bardzell, and although the concept and original publication are widely cited, as of 2020 Bardzell's proposed frameworks have been rarely used since.

Joëlle Coutaz is a French computer scientist, specializing in human-computer interaction (HCI). Her career includes research in the fields of operating systems and HCI, as well as being a professor at the University of Grenoble. Coutaz is considered a pioneer in HCI in France, and in 2007, she was awarded membership to SIGCHI. She was also involved in organizing CHI conferences and was a member on the editorial board of ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thorsten O. Zander</span> German scientist (born 1975)

Thorsten O. Zander is a German scientist who introduced the concept of passive brain-computer interface. He co-founded Zander Labs, a German-Dutch company in the field of passive brain computer interface (pBCI) and neuro-adaptive technology (NAT).

References

  1. 1 2 Huimin Jiang, Y. L., C. K. Kwong, & Ip, W. H. (2015). A methodology of integrating affective design with defining engineering specifications for product design. International Journal of Production Research, 53(8), 2472–2488. doi:10.1080/00207543.2014.975372
  2. 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
  3. ↑ 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.
  4. ↑ 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.
  5. 1 2 Pullman, M. E., & Gross, M. A. (2004). Ability of experience design elements to elicit emotions and loyalty behaviors. Decision Sciences, 35(4), 551–578. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0011-7315.2004.02611.x
  6. ↑ Noble, C. H., & Kumar, M. (2008). Using product design strategically to create deeper consumer connections. Business Horizons, 51(5), 441–450. doi:10.1016/j.bushor.2008.03.006
  7. 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)
  8. 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.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Norman, D. A. (2004). Emotional design: why we love (or hate) everyday things. Basic Books.
  10. 1 2 3 4 Norman, D. A., & Ortony, A. (2006). Designers and users: two perspectives on emotion and design. In S. Bagnara & G. Crampton Smith (Eds.), Theories and Practice in Interaction Design. CRC Press.
  11. ↑ Hevner, K. (1935). Experimental studies of the affective value of colors and lines. Journal of Applied Psychology, 19(4), 385–398. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0055538
  12. ↑ 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.
  13. ↑ 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
  14. ↑ 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]
  15. 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.
  16. 1 2 Lai, H.-H., Chang, Y.-M., & Chang, H.-C. (2005). A robust design approach for enhancing the feeling quality of a product: a car profile case study. International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics, 35(5), 445–460. doi:10.1016/j.ergon.2004.10.008
  17. ↑ Barsky, J., & Nash, L. (2002). Evoking Emotion: Affective Keys to Hotel Loyalty. Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, 43(1), 39-46. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010880402431004
  18. ↑ Chai, Y., Na, J., Ma, T., & Tang, Y. (2022). The moderating role of authenticity between experience economy and memory? The evidence from Qiong Opera. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1070690
  19. ↑ Ash, J. (2012). Attention, Videogames and the Retentional Economies of Affective Amplification. Theory, Culture & Society, 29(6), 3-26. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276412438595
  20. ↑ Bloemer, J., & Odekerken-Schröder, G. (2003). Antecedents and Consequences of Affective Commitment. Australasian Marketing Journal (AMJ), 11(3), 33–43. doi:10.1016/S1441-3582(03)70133-5
  21. 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.
  22. ↑ Velloso, E., Dingler, T., Vetere, F., Horman, S., McDougall, H., & Mierzejewska, K. (2018). Challenges of emerging technologies for human-centred design: bridging the gap between inquiry and invention. Proceedings of the 30th Australian Conference on Computer-Human Interaction, 609–611. Presented at the Melbourne, Australia. doi:10.1145/3292147.3293451
  23. ↑ Cheng, Q., & Tang, D. (2016, May). The Application of Emotional Design in the Web Interface. Proceedings of the 2016 2nd Workshop on Advanced Research and Technology in Industry Applications, 309–312. doi:10.2991/wartia-16.2016.60
  24. ↑ 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
  25. ↑ Mukherjee, Srishti (26 January 2022). "What is Ambient Intelligence?". Analytics India Magazine. Retrieved 4 February 2023.
  26. ↑ Mühlhäuser, Max; Ferscha, Alois; Aitenbichler, Erwin (2008). Constructing Ambient Intelligence. Berlin: Springer Science+Business Media. p. 301. ISBN   978-3540853787.
  27. 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
  28. ↑ 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.
  29. 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.
  30. 1 2 Johnson, D., & Wiles, J. (2003). Effective affective user interface design in games. Ergonomics, 46(13–14), 1332–1345. doi:10.1080/00140130310001610865
  31. ↑ Changchun Liu, N. S., Pramila Agrawal, & Chen, S. (2009). Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment in Computer Games Through Real-Time Anxiety-Based Affective Feedback. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 25(6), 506–529. doi:10.1080/10447310902963944
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.