Affective Interaction

AFFECTIVE INTERACTION

Mário Carranca, 2009

CARRANCA, Mário - Affective Interaction 2

WHAT IS IT? Field of research in Human-Computer

Interaction

“An affective human-computer interaction

is one in which emotional information is communicated by the user in a natural and comfortable way, recognized by the computer, and

used to help improve the interaction.” (Reynolds,

Picard)

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WHY BOTHER? Adaptability is essential Paradox of adaptability and stability

Pleasing the userversus

satisfying the user’s needs

Artificial Intelligence as part of HCI

CARRANCA, Mário - Affective Interaction


WHEN AND HOW?

Adaptability


A PRACTICAL EXAMPLE

•The user’s work was interrupted by

the text editor's “helpfulness”.


DON’T ASK, ADAPT!Explicitly requesting too much information from the user will result in deterioration of her relationship with the application

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HUMAN COMMUNICATION Aim on instinctive HCI

Reading the user instead of

prompting the user.

Technological obstaclesStandard HCI technology based on user

initiative and conscious, rational, non-instinctive decisions

CARRANCA, Mário - Affective Interaction


AFFECTIVE HCI

A cognitive approach


AFFECTION Analysis of a Human-Computer Interface

from an Affective perspective consists on analyzing the impacts of this interaction on the user’s emotional state.

Emotion: short-term subconscious reaction to stimuli

Moods: longer-term settlement of an emotion or chain of emotions.


A COGNITIVE APPROACH Moods affect:

memory;cognition;evaluation;expectations;opinions;motor behaviour;what emotions are experienced (hence

what other moods can be experienced) (Derbaix, 1999) Moods lead the user in a certain

direction


EVALUATION OF AN AFFECTIVE INTERFACE

The X-Factors (Subbaraman, 2007):EmotionsSensationsMoodsBeautyExpectationsEvaluations

Heuristic evaluation methods for these factors in an interface:

Psychological (most common in usability evaluation)

Physiological Behavioural


OBJECTIVES IN AFFECTIVE HCI Triggering user’s moods through stimuli Capture user’s emotions and use them

to improvise and manage situations Generate more ideas and metaphors to

trigger emotional reactions in the interfaces


RELEVANT CRITICISM How accurate are these evaluation

methods? How intrusive are these evaluation

methods? In what emotion should the designer

focus? Should the designer actively attempt

to manipulate the user’s mood?


GETTING PRACTICAL

Real World approaches to Affective Interaction


TECHNOLOGIES Input:

Motion and pressure sensorsCamerasMicrophonesBiomedical devices and sensorsStandard input technologies…

Output:VRRoboticsLEDsStandard output technologies…


WEARABLE COMPUTER Concept introduced by Picard and

Healey (1997) Computational objects as part of clothes

and wearable accessories The idea is for these objects to be in

constant contact with the wearer, preferably in a way that isn’t disruptive of her activities

The applications of this concept precede Picard and Healey by many years


HEARING GLOVE (1954) Developed by Norbert Wiener,

acclaimed mathematician and the father of Cybernetics.

The glove intercepted sound stimuli through electromagnetic components

The stimuli were converted into analogous tactile stimuli for the deaf wearer to feel

Wiener defended that:“Analogy is communication, and

communication is analogy”


KISMET (~1998) Developed at MIT as part of

Cythia Breazeal’s doctoralresearch project (late 1990s)

Capable of demonstratingfacial expressions andvocalizations

Equipped with several multi-purpose cameras anda microphone

Stimuli processed by several computers using MIT cross-department software over different operating systems


GALVACTIVATOR (1998) Developed at MIT Media Lab by Jocelyn

Scheirer and Rosalind Picard Glove equipped with a LED measures

skin conductivity, or electrodermal response to stimuli, a reliable indicator of psychological arousal

“Arousal has been found to be a strong predictor of attention and memory”

The LED’s intensity changes according to the wearer’s electrodermal response


IN PORTUGAL...Developments in Affective Interaction


SAFIRATOOLKIT

SupportingAffectiveInteractions forReal-TimeApplications

Developed by GAIPS at INESC-ID. Researchers searched to inspire themselves in the

way humans make decisions, and compute algorithms that simulate it

It was the first project in this area under the European Commission’s support


SAFIRA TOOLKIT The SAFIRA Toolkit is aimed at

developing affective applications. Its simple structure allows for easy

integration: 1. Affective Acquisition 2. Emotion Processing 3. Affective Expression 4. Inter-component Messaging


STUDY RESULTS Evaluator user in an MIT feedback

mechanism experiment: “I liked it being set up such that as soon as I

realized there was a problem, I could gripe.”

Users like to be able to convey their feelings about an interface without wasting time or losing their reduced attention span

Affective interaction is an area with many possibilities to be explored

Technology is still a barrier, but the progress in micro and nanotechnology has proved useful


REFERENCES Subbamaran, Karthi, http://www.slideshare.net/ESS/affective-

interaction Amadeu, Flávia, “Humano-Computador em Interações Afetivas” Bynum, Terrell Ward, “Norbert Wiener’s Vision: The Impact of “the

Automatic Age” on Our Moral Lives” Picard, Rosalind, “Affective Computing” Ferreira, Cristina Alexandra, “Abordar a computação afectiva sob

várias perspectivas” Paiva et al., “SAFIRA- Supporting Affective Interactions in Real-time

Applications” Paiva et al., “SenToy in FantasyA: Designing an Affective Sympathetic

Interface to a Computer Game”, 2002 Derbaix, C., Pecheux, C.: “Mood and children: Proposition of a

measurement scale”, 1999 Starner et al, “Augmented Reality Through Wearable Computing”,

1997 Post et al, “E-broidery: Design and fabrication of textile-based

computing”, 2000 Picard and Scheirer, “The Galvactivator: A glove that senses and

communicates skin conductivity”, 1997


QUESTIONS?

Affective Interaction

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