Emotrace: Tracing Emotions through Human-System Interaction
Abstract
Emotional reactions are a key part of user experience. This research examines capture of continuous, quantitative, affective self-reports as a complement to existing methods of evaluating human-system or product interaction. Emotrace is a novel method of measuring emotional responses on the two dimensions of valence and arousal. A pilot study was conducted to inform the design of three emotrace prototypes. This was followed by an experiment where 12 participants watched short videos to elicit emotions, with four self-report conditions (one-slider, two-slider, a touchscreen and no reporting) and physiological capture (heart rate variability and skin conductance). The tools were found to be valid, as ratings reflected the emotion content of the videos. The sliders were found to be more reliable when compared to the touchscreen. We conclude with preliminary recommendations concerning the use of emotrace measurement of emotional user experience to complement current methods of user-interaction evaluation.
Authors: Danielle M. Lottridge, Mark Chignell
Published in: Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting (2009)