Affective Loop
Experiences – what
are they?
Kristina Höök
from
Mobile Life @ Stockholm University & SICS
SenToy
SenToy
Affective loop – first stab
> Users first express their emotions
>
>
through some physical interaction
involving their body, for example,
through gestures or manipulations of an
artifact
The system then responds generating
affective expressions using, for example,
colors, animations, and haptics
This in turn affects users making them
respond and, step-by-step, feel more and
more involved
Questions
> What is an Affective Loop?
> Can we design for Affective Loop
>
experiences?
Does it work beyond games?
eMoto
eMoto
eMoto
eMoto
No labelled emotions! Usage is design
Gesture and animation resonates
eMoto
eMoto
People usually ask:
> But how can they communicate? There are
no emotion labels? How can they
understand one-another?
eMoto
Creating meaning together
Mona: “Green
is my favorite
color and my
boyfriend
knows that, so
this is why it
is green
because he
knows that I
think that
green is a
lovely color,
just as lovely
as he is.”
Friends:
”Mona is a
green person”
eMoto
Meaning-making through body?
Mona said:
”I leave out things I think are
implicit due to the color… the
advantage is that you don’t have to
write as much, it is like a body
language. Like when you meet someone
you don’t say ’I’m sulky’ or
something like that, because that
shows, I don’t need to say that. And
it’s the same here, but here it’s
color.”
eMoto
Involvement through body
Agnes’ partner:
”When she was happy she showed that
with her whole body. Not only her
arm was shaking but her whole body.
Meanwhile a huge smile appeared on
her lips.”
Lessons learnt?
> Communication of emotions is not an information
transfer problem - it is about physically and
intellectually experiencing interaction
> It is impossible to separate emotion from overall
social context or from the on-going conversation
> Emotions arise from the dialogue; they are
constructed, negotiated and experienced by
friends together
Affective Diary
Affective Diary
Affective Diary
Affective Diary
”[pointing at
the first
slightly red
character] And
then I become
like this, here
I am kind of, I
am kind of both
happy and sad
in some way and
something like
that. I like
him and then it
is so sad tht
we see each
other so
little. And
then I cannot
really show
it.”
Meaning-making reflection change
Affective Diary
”After that we
talked and the
discussions were
very intense, a
lot about, which
shows here [points
at the figures],
lilac is
spirituality, we
talked a lot about
clairvoyance,
shamans, healing.
Everybody shared
their experiences,
a very intense
meeting.”
Meaning-making–of all kinds!
Lessons learnt?
> Affective Diary builds on autonomous body
>
>
reactions rather than conscious gestures,
expressing and inducing emotions
Users get involved with a slower,
reflective loop where memories of past
events are re-interpreted, re-lived and
experienced in a new way
‘Meaning’ is created from a mixture of
physical, emotional, bodily experiences,
social context and memory of past events
Affective loop – second stab
> Emotions are processes, constructed in
>
>
interaction, starting from bodily,
cognitive or social experiences
The user is an active, meaning-making
individual – the interpretation
responsibility lies with the user, not
the system
Affective loops creates for nondualistic, non-reductionist experiences
Why non-reductionist?
Address dualism problem
> Body – mind
> Rationality – irrationality
> Emotion – thinking
Knowing and communicating through whole
being
Design ideal
By privileging users to create meaning from
their own data they can make the system fit
with their needs, ideas, hopes and dreams
These applications will not make sense or
have any meaning until users pick them up
and make them part of their own practice,
their own familiarity with their emotional,
social and bodily encounters with the world
Theory?
> How can we explain affective loops?
Third wave of HCI
Experiences
Collaboration
Usability
Theories
> Biologistic
> Embodiment
> Holistic
Theories
> Cognitivistic
> measurements, rules, cognitivistic, in the
brain, hedonistic usability, biology
> Embodiment
> Holistic
Cognitivistic
> Measure hedonic qualities by bodily
feedback (e.g. Hassenzahl)
Theories
> Cognitivistic
> measurements, rules, cognitivistic, in the
brain, hedonistic usability, biology
> Embodiment
> Holistic
Theories
> Cognitivistic
> measurements, rules, cognitivistic, in the
brain, hedonistic usability, biology
> Embodiment
> social & bodily practices, ethnography,
phenomenology, in the world
> Holistic
Embodiment
> Our experiences depend on our human
>
>
bodies through our experiential and
cultural bodies
Emotions are experienced through the
constitution of our experiential body
Through our cultural bodies we learn how
and when emotions are appropriate, and
which expressions fit in different
cultures, contexts and situations
Also in mediated communication
Mona:
”Interesting is the guy you meet in
the pub, you never call him, you
send him an SMS because you’re not
brave enough to call him. And then
it’s like ‘Shall I send an emoto or
an SMS?’ If you send an SMS the
signal would be ‘Now I’m a coward
and…’. I think emotos end up
somewhere in between an SMS and
actually calling him.”
Theories
> Cognitivistic
> measurements, rules, cognitivistic, in the
brain, hedonistic usability, biology
> Embodiment
> social & bodily practices, ethnography,
phenomenology, in the world
> Holistic
Theories
> Cognitivistic
> measurements, rules, cognitivistic, in the
brain, hedonistic usability, biology
> Embodiment
> social & bodily practices, ethnography,
phenomenology, in the world
> Holistic
> subjective, pragmatics, art, in ourselves
Holistic
> Designing systems is an art-form
>
recognizing human beings as something
else than machines built in wet-ware
Affective loop experience is similar to
concepts such as:
> aesthetic experiences
> subjectivity
> gameplay in games
> That is, you know when you experience
them, but cannot divide them into
subparts that can be measured and then
added together as in an equation,
calculating its ‘experience-value’
Experiences? Dewey 1934
“An experience has a unity that gives it its
name, that meal, that storm, that rupture of a
friendship. The existence of this unity is
constituted by a single quality that pervades the
entire experience in spite of the variation of its
constituent parts.”
Theories
> Cognitivistic
> measurements, rules, cognitivistic, in the
brain, hedonistic usability, biology
> Embodiment
> social & bodily practices, ethnography,
phenomenology, in the world
> Holistic
> subjective, pragmatics, art, in ourselves
Final words
A new kind of rigor is called for when we
start mixing ‘soft’ design issues with
scientific endeavors of understanding human
emotion and persuasiveness
Producing (design) knowledge in this area
may feel like a daunting task as we strive
to capture highly elusive, subjective,
context- and application-specific qualities
But it is necessary!
Final words
Bodily persuasion?
I thank the usual crowd and those who give us money....