Ebook: Affect and Emotion in Human-Computer Interaction: From Theory to Applications

Affect and emotion play an important role in our everyday lives: They are present whatever we do, wherever we are, and wherever we go, without us being aware of them for much of the time. When it comes to interaction, be it with humans, technology, or humans via technology, we suddenly become more aware of emotion, either by seeing the other’s emotional expression, or by not getting an emotional response while anticipating one.

Given this, it seems only sensible to explore affect and emotion in human-computer interaction, to investigate the underlying principles, to study the role they play, to develop methods to quantify them, and to finally build applications that make use of them. This is the research field for which, over ten years ago, Rosalind Picard coined the phrase "affective computing".

The present book provides an account of the latest work on a variety of aspects related to affect and emotion in human-technology interaction. It covers theoretical issues, user experience and design aspects as well as sensing issues, and reports on a number of affective applications that have been developed in recent years.

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Interacting with computers is ever changing; the activities computers are used for, thedomains they are used in, the people who use them, and the way that they are usedhave been constantly evolving. But over the past few years an additional dimensionhas been added to this interaction, which considers the utility and effectiveness ofincorporating emotion into the interface. Over ten years ago, Rosalind Picard coinedthe phrase “affective computing” for computing that relates to, arises from, or deliberatelyinfluences emotion or other affective phenomena1. Since then, numerous researchersall over the world have devoted themselves to studying the role affect andemotion play in our interactions with technology. The affective computing communityis growing rapidly. A number of workshops, symposia, and even conferences makeemotion in HCI their subject. This book actually developed out of some of thoseevents. When Springer approached us to compile a book on the subject, we were justorganizing the third workshop on emotion in HCI at the British HCI Group’s annualconference, held in the UK. While the workshop had numerous contributions from thetraditionally very active British and European community, we also received contributionsfrom overseas.