Exploring the Role of Affect Recognition in Web-Capable Applications

In this project, we have collected people’s opinions and reactions to the possibility of emotion-aware web-capable applications from semi-structured interviews, those which will have the capability to read users' emotions and adapt their interfaces accordingly. The purpose of this work is to improve understanding of how people envision such emotion-aware interfaces may be a part of their computing experience, and to explore any concerns that people have relating to this technology. We expect that such information will be helpful for directing the development of new emotion-aware adaptive web interfaces.

We used affinity diagram approach to categorize and understand people’s opinions and reactions to the possibility of emotion-aware web-capable applications.

Many participants stated that they want emotion-aware intelligent systems to try and modify their emotional state. For example, when they are unhappy or overwhelmed, then the system performs actions to help mitigate the current emotional states. Many of the participants suggested automatic music playing to achieve above goal.

Some participants wanted the system to react based on current feeling. For example, if they are in negative mood, the system can reduce the number of or type of notification popups.

Apart from proactive emotion-tailored support, some participants pointed out on the benefits of feedback on their or others emotional state.

Online social network services are growing greatly. A few participants wanted an emotion-aware computer to serve online social purposes. They expressed their desire to share their current emotion with others online.

Many participants expressed a range of privacy concerns. Some did not mind their emotions being read and used for user-specific tailoring, but they expressed worry about the technology exposing or sharing their emotions to others.

Project Publications

• 
• 
•