Chapter 5

EMOTIONAL
INTERACTION
 Overview
• Emotions and the user experience
• Expressive and annoying interface
– how the ‘appearance’ of an interface can affect users
• Models of emotion
– Ortony et al (2005)

• Automatic emotion recognition and emotional technologies

• Persuasive technologies and behavioral change
– how technologies can be designed to change people’s
attitudes and behavior
• Anthropomorphism
– The pros and cons

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 Emotions and the user
experience
• HCI has traditionally been about designing efficient and
effective systems

• Now more about how to design interactive systems that

make people respond in certain ways
– e.g. to be happy, to be trusting, to learn, to be motivated

• Emotional interaction is concerned with how we feel and

react when interacting with technologies

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 Is this form fun to fill in?

“My goal was to design

Wufoo to feel like
something Fisher-Price
would make.”
- Kevin Hale, Wufoo director

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 Emotional interaction
• What makes us happy, sad, annoyed, anxious,
frustrated, motivated, delirious and so on
– translating this into different aspects of the user experience

• Why people become emotionally attached to certain

products (e.g. virtual pets)

• Can social robots help reduce loneliness and improve

wellbeing?

• How to change human behavior through the use of

emotive feedback

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 Activity
• Try to remember the emotions you went
through when buying a big ticket item
online (e.g. a fridge, a vacation, a
computer)

• How many different emotions did you go

through?

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 Emotional design model
• Norman, Ortony and Revelle (2004) model of emotion

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 Claims from model
• Our emotional state changes how we think
– when frightened or angry we focus narrowly and body
responds by tensing muscles and sweating
• more likely to be less tolerant

– when happy we are less focused and the body

relaxes
• more likely to overlook minor problems and be more creative

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 Activity
• Do you feel more creative when you are in
a happy mood? Do you get less work done
when you are feeling stressed?

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 Expressive interfaces
• Provide reassuring feedback that can be both informative
and fun
• But can also be intrusive, causing people to get annoyed
and even angry
• Color, icons, sounds, graphical elements and animations
are used to make the ‘look and feel’ of an interface
appealing
– conveys an emotional state
• In turn this can affect the usability of an interface
– people are prepared to put up with certain aspects of an interface (e.g.
slow download rate) if the end result is appealing and aesthetic

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 Friendly interfaces
• Microsoft pioneered friendly interfaces for
technophobes - ‘At home with Bob’ software

• 3D metaphors based on familiar places (e.g.

living rooms)

• Agents in the guise of pets (e.g. bunny, dog)

were included to talk to the user
– Make users feel more at ease and comfortable

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 Bob

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 Clippy
• Why was Clippy
disliked
by so many?
• Was it annoying,
distracting,
patronising or
other?
• What sort of user
liked Clippy?

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 Frustrating interfaces
• Many causes:
– 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 a mistake was made earlier
and they need to start all over again

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 Gimmicks
• Amusing to the designer but not the user,
e.g.
– Clicking on a link to a website only to discover
that it is still ‘under construction’

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 Error messages
“The application Word Wonder has unexpectedly quit due to a
type 2 error.”
Why not instead:
“the application has expectedly quit due to poor coding in the
operating system”

• Shneiderman’s guidelines for error messages include:

• avoid using terms like FATAL, INVALID, BAD
• Audio warnings
• Avoid UPPERCASE and long code numbers
• Messages should be precise rather than vague
• Provide context-sensitive help

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Website error messages

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More helpful error message
“The requested page /helpme is not available on the web server.

If you followed a link or bookmark to get to this page, please let us

know, so that we can fix the problem. Please include the URL of the
referring page as well as the URL of the missing page.

Otherwise check that you have typed the address of the web page
correctly.

The Web site you seek

Cannot be located, but
Countless more exist.”

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 Should computers say they’re sorry?
• Reeves and Naas (1996) argue that computers should be
made to apologize
• Should emulate human etiquette
• Would users be as forgiving of computers saying sorry as
people are of each other when saying sorry?
• How sincere would they think the computer was being? For
example, after a system crash:
– “I’m really sorry I crashed. I’ll try not to do it again”

• How else should computers communicate with users?

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 Detecting emotions and emotional
technology
• Sensing technologies used to measure
GSR, facial expressions, gestures, body
movement
• Aim is to predict user’s emotions and
aspects of their behavior –
• E.g. what is someone most likely to buy
online when feeling sad, bored or happy

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 Facial Coding
• Measures a user’s emotions as they interact
with a computer or tablet
• .

• Analyses images captured by a webcam of

their face
• Uses this to gauge how engaged the user is
when looking at movies, online shopping
sites and ads
• 6 core expressions - sadness, happiness,
disgust, fear, surprise and anger

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How to use the emotional data?
• If user screws up their face when an ad
pops up -> feel disgust
• If start smiling -> they are feeling happy
• Website can adapt its ad, movie storyline
or content to match user’s emotional state
• Eye-tracking, finger pulse, speech and
words/phrases also analysed when
tweeting or posting to Facebook
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 Indirect emotion detection
• Beginning to be used more to infer or
predict someone’s behavior
• For example, determining a person’s
suitability for a job, or how they will vote at
an election
• Do you think it is creepy that technology
can read your emotions from your facial
expressions or from your tweets?

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 Persuasive technologies and
behavioral change
• Interacive computing systems deliberately
designed to change people’s attitudes and
behaviors (Fogg, 2003)

• A diversity of techniques now used to change

what they do or think
– Pop-up ads, warning messages, reminders, prompts,
personalized messages, recommendations, Amazon 1-click

– Commonly referred to as nudging

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 Nintendo’s Pocket Pikachu
• Changing bad habits and improving well being
– 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

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 How effective?
• Is the use of novel forms of interactive
technologies (e.g., the combination of
sensors and dynamically updated
information) that monitor, nag, or send
personalized messages intermittently to a
person more effective at changing a person’s
behavior than non-interactive methods, such
as the placement of warning signs, labels, or
ads in prominent positions?

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Which is most effective?

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 Tracking devices
• Mobile apps designed to help people
monitor and change their behaviour (e.g.
fitness, sleeping, weight)
• Can compare with online leader boards
and charts, to show how they have done in
relation to their peers and friends
• Also apps that encourage reflection that in
turn increase well-being and happiness
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Energy reduction

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 The Tidy Street project
• large-scale visualization of the street’s
electricity usage
– stenciled display on the road surface using chalk

– provided realtime feedback that all could see change each day

– reduced electricity consumption by 15%

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 Phishing and trust
• Web used to deceive people into parting with
personal details
– e.g. Paypal, eBay and won the lottery letters

• Allows Internet fraudsters to access their

bank accounts and draw money from them
• Many vulnerable people fall for it
• The art of deception is centuries old but
internet allows ever more ingenious ways to
trick people

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 Anthropomorphism
• Attributing human-like qualities to inanimate objects
(e.g. cars, computers)

• Well known phenomenon in advertising

– Dancing butter, drinks, breakfast cereals

• Much exploited in human-computer interaction

– Make user experience more enjoyable, more
motivating, make people feel at ease, reduce
anxiety

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 Which do you prefer?
1. As a welcome message

• “Hello Chris! Nice to see you again. Welcome

back. Now what were we doing last time? Oh
yes, exercise 5. Let’s start again.”

• “User 24, commence exercise 5.”

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 Which do you prefer?

2. Feedback when get something wrong

1. “Now Chris, that’s not right. You can do better

than that. Try again.”
2. “Incorrect. Try again.”

Is there a difference as to what you prefer

depending on type of message? Why?

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Evidence to support anthropomorphism

• Reeves and Naas (1996) found that

computers that flatter and praise users in
education software programs -> positive
impact on them
“Your question makes an important and useful
distinction. Great job!”
• Students were more willing to continue with
exercises with this kind of feedback

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 Criticism of anthropomorphism
• Deceptive, make people feel anxious, inferior or stupid
• People tend not to like screen characters that wave their
fingers at the user and say:
– Now Chris, that’s not right. You can do better than
that.Try again.”

• Many prefer the more impersonal:

– “Incorrect. Try again.”
• Studies have shown that personalized feedback is
considered to be less honest and makes users feel less
responsible for their actions (e.g. Quintanar, 1982)

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 Virtual characters
• Appearing on our screens in the form of:
– Sales agents, characters in videogames,
learning companions, wizards, pets,
newsreaders

• Provides a persona that is welcoming, has

personality and makes user feel involved
with them

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 Disadvantages
• Can lead people into false sense of belief,
enticing them to confide personal secrets with
chatterbots

• Annoying and frustrating

– e.g. Clippy

• May not be trustworthy

– virtual shop assistants?

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 Virtual agents
• What do the virtual agents do?
• Do they elicit an emotional response in
you?
• Do you trust them?
• What is the style of interaction?
• What facial expression do they have?
• Are they believable, pushy, helpful?
• Would it be different if they were male?
If so, how?
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What makes a virtual agent believable?
• Believability refers to the extent to which
users come to believe an agent’s intentions
and personality
• Appearance is very important
– Are simple cartoon-like characters or more realistic characters, resembling
the human form more believable?

• Behaviour is very important

– How an agent moves, gestures and refers to objects on the screen

– Exaggeration of facial expressions and gestures to show underlying

emotions (c.f. animation industry)

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 Robot-like or cuddly?
• Which do you prefer and why?

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 Implications
• Should we create products that adapt according
to people’s different emotional states?
– When people are feeling angry should an interface
be more attentive and informative than when they
are happy?

• Is Norman right?
– designers “can get away with more” for products
intended to be used during leisure time than those
designed for serious tasks

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 Summary
• Emotional aspects of interaction design concerned with how to
facilitate certain states (e.g. pleasure) or avoid reactions (e.g.
frustration)
• Well-designed interfaces can elicit good feelings in people
• Aesthetically pleasing interfaces can be a pleasure to use
• Expressive interfaces can provide reassuring feedback to users
• Badly designed interfaces make people frustrated, annoyed, or
angry
• Emotional technologies can be designed to persuade people to
change their behaviors or attitudes
• Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human qualities to
objects
• Virtual agents and robot pets have been developed to make
people feel motivated, reassured, and in a good mood

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