Emotional Experience and Interaction Design

The emotional experience of an interactive system has been the subject of a great deal of recent interest and study in the HCI community. However, many of researchers have pointed out the extreme difficulty in predicting or controlling these emotional experiences through intentional design choices. However, the user study we conducted proposes a different point-of-view than these claims. Although these emotional responses were not always tied directly to the device itself and influenced by contextual factors, we discovered that certain controllable aspects of interactive products showed clear patterns of emotion in the responses of our participants. We discuss our findings and provide implications for the design of emotional experiences in interactive devices.