Resonating Experiences of Self and Others enabled by a Tangible Somaesthetic Design

Digitalization is penetrating every aspect of everyday life including a human's heart beating, which can easily be sensed by wearable sensors and displayed for others to see, feel, and potentially "bodily resonate" with. Previous work in studying human interactions and interaction designs with physiological data, such as a heart's pulse rate, have argued that feeding it back to the users may, for example support users' mindfulness and self-awareness during various everyday activities and ultimately support their wellbeing. Inspired by Somaesthetics as a discipline, which focuses on an appreciation of the living body's role in all our experiences, we designed and explored mobile tangible heart beat displays, which enable rich forms of bodily experiencing oneself and others in social proximity. In this paper, we first report on the design process of tangible heart displays and then present results of a field study with 30 pairs of participants. Participants were asked to use the tangible heart displays during watching movies together and report their experience in three different heart display conditions (i.e., displaying their own heart beat, their partner's heart beat, and watching a movie without a heart display). We found, for example that participants reported significant effects in experiencing sensory immersion when they felt their own heart beats compared to the condition without any heart beat display, and that feeling their partner's heart beats resulted in significant effects on social experience. We refer to resonance theory to discuss the results, highlighting the potential of how ubiquitous technology could utilize physiological data to provide resonance in a modern society facing social acceleration.Comment: 18 page

Exploring the Affective Loop

Research in psychology and neurology shows that both body and mind are involved when experiencing emotions (Damasio 1994, Davidson et al. 2003). People are also very physical when they try to communicate their emotions. Somewhere in between beings consciously and unconsciously aware of it ourselves, we produce both verbal and physical signs to make other people understand how we feel. Simultaneously, this production of signs involves us in a stronger personal experience of the emotions we express. Emotions are also communicated in the digital world, but there is little focus on users' personal as well as physical experience of emotions in the available digital media. In order to explore whether and how we can expand existing media, we have designed, implemented and evaluated /eMoto/, a mobile service for sending affective messages to others. With eMoto, we explicitly aim to address both cognitive and physical experiences of human emotions. Through combining affective gestures for input with affective expressions that make use of colors, shapes and animations for the background of messages, the interaction "pulls" the user into an /affective loop/. In this thesis we define what we mean by affective loop and present a user-centered design approach expressed through four design principles inspired by previous work within Human Computer Interaction (HCI) but adjusted to our purposes; /embodiment/ (Dourish 2001) as a means to address how people communicate emotions in real life, /flow/ (Csikszentmihalyi 1990) to reach a state of involvement that goes further than the current context, /ambiguity/ of the designed expressions (Gaver et al. 2003) to allow for open-ended interpretation by the end-users instead of simplistic, one-emotion one-expression pairs and /natural but designed expressions/ to address people's natural couplings between cognitively and physically experienced emotions. We also present results from an end-user study of eMoto that indicates that subjects got both physically and emotionally involved in the interaction and that the designed "openness" and ambiguity of the expressions, was appreciated and understood by our subjects. Through the user study, we identified four potential design problems that have to be tackled in order to achieve an affective loop effect; the extent to which users' /feel in control/ of the interaction, /harmony and coherence/ between cognitive and physical expressions/,/ /timing/ of expressions and feedback in a communicational setting, and effects of users' /personality/ on their emotional expressions and experiences of the interaction

Designing gestures for affective input: an analysis of shape, effort and valence

We discuss a user-centered approach to incorporating affective expressions in interactive applications, and argue for a design that addresses both body and mind. In particular, we have studied the problem of finding a set of affective gestures. Based on previous work in movement analysis and emotion theory [Davies, Laban and Lawrence, Russell], and a study of an actor expressing emotional states in body movements, we have identified three underlying dimensions of movements and emotions: shape, effort and valence. From these dimensions we have created a new affective interaction model, which we name the affective gestural plane model. We applied this model to the design of gestural affective input to a mobile service for affective messages

Emotional Biosensing: Exploring Critical Alternatives

Emotional biosensing is rising in daily life: Data and categories claim to know how people feel and suggest what they should do about it, while CSCW explores new biosensing possibilities. Prevalent approaches to emotional biosensing are too limited, focusing on the individual, optimization, and normative categorization. Conceptual shifts can help explore alternatives: toward materiality, from representation toward performativity, inter-action to intra-action, shifting biopolitics, and shifting affect/desire. We contribute (1) synthesizing wide-ranging conceptual lenses, providing analysis connecting them to emotional biosensing design, (2) analyzing selected design exemplars to apply these lenses to design research, and (3) offering our own recommendations for designers and design researchers. In particular we suggest humility in knowledge claims with emotional biosensing, prioritizing care and affirmation over self- improvement, and exploring alternative desires. We call for critically questioning and generatively re- imagining the role of data in configuring sensing, feeling, ‘the good life,’ and everyday experience

SenToy and FantasyA: evaluating affective gaming

Gaming is a highly relevant application area for Intelligent Agents and Human Computer Interaction (HCI). Computer games bring us a full set of new gaming experiences where synthetic characters take on the main role.Using affective input in the interaction with a game and in particular with a character is a recent and fairly unexplored dimension. This video presents a study of a tangible interaction device for affective input and its use in a role-playing game where emotions are part of the game logic

Tensions of Data-Driven Reflection: A Case Study of Real-Time Emotional Biosensing

Biosensing displays, increasingly enrolled in emotional reflection, promise authoritative insight by presenting users’ emotions as discrete categories. Rather than machines interpreting emotions, we sought to explore an alternative with emotional biosensing displays in which users formed their own interpretations and felt comfortable critiquing the display. So, we designed, implemented, and deployed, as a technology probe, an emotional biosensory display: Ripple is a shirt whose pattern changes color responding to the wearer’s skin conductance, which is associated with excitement. 17 participants wore Ripple over 2 days of daily life. While some participants appreciated the ‘physical connection’ Ripple provided between body and emotion, for others Ripple fostered insecurities about ‘how much’ feeling they had. Despite our design intentions, we found participants rarely questioned the display’s relation to their feelings. Using biopolitics to speculate on Ripple’s surprising authority, we highlight ethical stakes of biosensory representations for sense of self and ways of feeling

A user-centred approach to affective interaction

We have built eMoto, a mobile service for sending and receiving affective messages, with the explicit aim of addressing the inner experience of emotions. eMoto is a designed artifact that carries emotional experiences only achieved through interaction. Following on the theories of embodiment, we argue emotional experiences can not be design in only design for. eMoto is the result of a user-centered design approach, realized through a set of initial brain-storming methods, a persona, a Laban-analysis of body language and a two-tiered evaluation method. eMoto is not a system that could have been designed from theory only, but require an iterative engagement with end-users, however, in combination with theoretical work. More specifically, we will show how we have managed to design an ambiguous and open system that allows for users’ emotional engagement

eMoto - Affectively Involving both Body and Mind

It is known that emotions are experienced by both body and mind. Oftentimes, emotions are evoked by sub-symbolic stimuli, such as colors, shapes, gestures, or music. We have built eMoto, a mobile service for sending affective mes-sages to others, with the explicit aim of addressing such sensing. Through combining affective gestures for input with affective expressions that make use of colors, shapes and animations for the background of messages, the interac-tion pulls the user into an embodied ‘affective loop’. We present a user study of eMoto where 12 out of 18 subjects got both physically and emotionally involved in the interac-tion. The study also shows that the designed ‘openness’ and ambiguity of the expressions, was appreciated and under-stood by our subjects

Limits of Kansei – Kansei unlimited

This article discusses momentary limitations of the Kansei Engineering methods. There are for example the focus on the evaluation of colour and form factors, as well as the highly time consuming creation of the questionnaires. To overcome these limits we firstly suggest the integration of word lists from related research fields, like sociology and cognitive psychology on product emotions in the Kansei questionnaires. Thereafter we present a study on the wide range of Kansei attributes treated in an industrial setting. Concept words used by designers are being collected through word maps and categorized into attributes. In a third step we introduce a user-product interaction schema in which the Kansei attributes from the study are positioned. This schema unfolds potential expansion points for future applications of Kansei engineering beyond its current limits