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Emotional Space: Understanding Affective Spatial
Dimensions of Constructed Embodied Shapes
Edward Melcer
NYU Polytechnic School of
Engineering
Brooklyn, NY 11201
eddie.melcer@nyu.edu
Katherine Isbister
NYU Polytechnic School of
Engineering
Brooklyn, NY 11201
katherine.isbister@nyu.edu
ABSTRACT
We build upon recent research designing a constructive,
multi-touch emotional assessment tool and present
preliminary qualitative results from a Wizard of Oz study
simulating the tool with clay. Our results showed the
importance of emotionally contextualized spatial
orientations, manipulations, and interactions of real world
objects in the constructive process, and led to the
identification of two new affective dimensions for the tool.
Author Keywords
Emotional assessment; Affect; Embodiment; Wizard of Oz.
ACM Classification Keywords
H.5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI):
Miscellaneous.
INTRODUCTION
In recent years, HCI researchers and practitioners have
recognized the importance of emotion and pleasure in user
experience [1]. Unfortunately, traditional emotional
assessment tools encounter difficulty with more nuanced
aspects of emotion in an interactive experience. Our recent
work on emotional assessment [2] has identified two causes
for these issues: (1) current emotional assessment tools
provide a limited taxonomy to select emotions from, and (2)
emotional assessment tools only provide snapshots of
emotion and are unable to capture the temporal aspects of
changing emotions over time. This led to the design of a
new emotional assessment tool, the Constructive Sensual
Evaluation Instrument (CSEI). The CSEI utilizes affective
dimensions of shape to provide a multi-touch gestural
interface for constructing affective embodied shapes.
We propose that the use of affective dimensions of shape
creates a larger, constructive emotional space where users
can express a wider range of emotions and capture temporal
aspects through recorded changes in shape over time.
EXPERIMENT
We conducted a Wizard of Oz study to simulate individual
and collaborative use of the CSEI system with clay. For the
study, we created a protocol that combined clay shape
creation with a think-aloud method and semi-structured
interviews. A total of 6 male and 8 female subjects (ages 22-51,
M=36.5) participated. Each test was conducted with two
participants and contained two individual and two collaborative
embodied shape construction phases.
OBSERVATIONS AND RESULTS
The study revealed repetition to be a key dimension in the
construction of embodied shapes. Participants used
repetition to embody low arousal emotions in two distinctly
different ways: (1) repetition of a single shape manipulation
during the construction process (e.g. repeatedly rolling),
and (2) repetition of salient visual features.
The orientation of a shape and its extrusions was another
key dimension found in the study. Participants more
commonly associated an emotion with shapes utilizing
orientations that matched spatial orientations of real world
objects or actions. For instance, several participants
commented on orienting extrusions upwards and away from
the center in order to match the look of an explosion.
CONCLUSION
We found embodiment of emotion through shape relies on
spatial orientations, manipulations, and interactions of real
world objects that are viewed as emotionally similar. For
our study results, this manifested in the affective
dimensions of repetition and orientation. Our results
suggest re-evaluation of the CSEI's affective dimensions to
consider (1) patterns in spatial manipulation and (2) the
spatial orientation of shapes and extrusions.
REFERENCES
1. Höök, Kia, et al. "Evaluation of Affective Interactive
Applications." Emotion-Oriented Systems. Springer
Berlin Heidelberg (2011), 687-703.
2. Melcer, E., Isbister, K. "CSEI: The Constructive Sensual
Evaluation Instrument."Workshop on Tactile User
Experience Evaluation Methods. CHI 2014, N.p.
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SUI'14, Oct 04-05 2014, Honolulu, HI, USA
ACM 978-1-4503-2820-3/14/10.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2659766.2661208.
Poster Session
SUI’14, October 4-5, 2014, Honolulu, HI, USA
143