Emotional Experience during Human-Computer Interaction: A Survey

Abstract

As human-computer interaction (HCI) technology becomes more and more integrated into our daily life, increasing attention has been drawn towards the interaction experience in addition to HCI efficiency. In the present study, we conducted a survey to explore context-specific emotional experience in HCI. Four hundred participants were recruited to report the frequency of their emotional experiences on 44 fine-grained emotion items in six representative HCI scenarios. Compared with six matched human-human interaction (HHI) scenarios used as control, the HCI scenarios were in general more frequently associated with negative emotions, and less frequently associated with positive emotions, especially when computer served as a tool for communication with other people. Furthermore, the 44 emotional experience items in HCI were summarized as five factors, representing low-arousal focused, positively engaged, emotionally empathetic, high-arousal negative and frustratingly confused. Our study presents a comprehensive overview of context-specific emotional experience in human-computer interactions and provides a framework for emotion evaluation in HCI applications.

Keywords:

• Emotion
• context specificity
• human-computer interaction (HCI)
• human-human interaction (HHI)
• survey

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [61977041], the Tsinghua University Spring Breeze Fund [2021Z99CFY037], and the Education Innovation Grants of Tsinghua University [DX05_02].

Notes on contributors

Lilu Tang

Lilu Tang is a graduate student in the Department of Psychology at Tsinghua University, China. Her current research interests include human-computer interaction, emotion measurement, and user experience.

Peijun Yuan

Peijun Yuan is a research scientist in Qiyuan Lab, China. She received her Ph.D. degree in cognitive neuroscience from the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Her current research interests include human-computer interaction, spatiotemporal dynamics of cognition, and visual attention.

Dan Zhang

Dan Zhang is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Tsinghua University, China. He received his Ph.D. degree in biomedical engineering at Tsinghua University in 2011. His research interests include affective computing, brain-computer interface, as well as the psychological basis of emotion.