We introduce the preliminary exploration of AniBalloons, a novel form of chat
balloon animations aimed at enriching nonverbal affective expression in
text-based communications. AniBalloons were designed using extracted motion
patterns from affective animations and mapped to six commonly communicated
emotions. An evaluation study with 40 participants assessed their effectiveness
in conveying intended emotions and their perceived emotional properties. The
results showed that 80% of the animations effectively conveyed the intended
emotions. AniBalloons covered a broad range of emotional parameters, comparable
to frequently used emojis, offering potential for a wide array of affective
expressions in daily communication. The findings suggest AniBalloons' promise
for enhancing emotional expressiveness in text-based communication and provide
early insights for future affective design.Comment: Accepted by CSCW 2023 poste