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Emotion and the sense of presence in HCI design - 17 October 2005
by John Waterworth
Read this article in Chinese (translated by Kevin Huang, proof read by Christina Li)
Emotion is becoming accepted as an important ingredient of successful humancomputer interaction (HCI) design. It has always been important in design, but as a discipline rooted in the methods and mindset of the cognitive psychology of the 70s and 80s, HCI has been slow to accept that affect (as exhibited in feelings of happiness or anxiety) is an essential component of reasoning about the world, not an opposing force. Although we may loosely speak of emotion versus reason, both too much and too little emotion will have a negative impact on cognition, with the latter being the more pathological.
In the design of HCI, both software and hardware, it is important to keep in mind that not all emotions are equal. As an evolved response system aimed at survival, negative feedback in the form of unpleasant emotional experiences are particularly important. Any successful and advanced organism must be able to answer the following questions (though not necessarily in this order):
- Is this happening in the world around me, or only in my head? (answered on the basis of whether I feel present in an external environment)
- Is this likely to be true or is it fiction? (answered on the basis of a reality judgement)
- Do I need to avoid this, and how urgently? (answered on the basis of an emotional experience)
Our theoretical position, developed within the EMMA – Engaging Media for Mental Health Applications (IST-2001-39192 http://www.emma.upv.es) – European Community funded research project, suggests that the level of experienced presence, judgments of reality, and emotional responses that provide the answers to these questions are interlinked psychological phenomena, each with survival value but each likely to affect the others.
During the EMMA project, we developed a virtual environment called the Exploratorium (Olsson and Waterworth 2004) that consists of three different zones (Paradiso, Purgatory and Inferno) arranged vertically in virtual space, and aimed at evoking three different types of mood (tranquil, neutral, and anxious, see Figure 1). Moods are thought of as relatively long lasting emotional states.
Figure 1. The 3 different zones in the Exploratorium
Our tests have shown that it was possible to induce the different moods by the use of the virtual environment. The results also showed that different kinds of mood evoke different degrees of presence in the environment. Paradiso, which evoked a calm mood, created a low degree of presence, while Inferno, which evoked anxiety, induced a high degree of presence. The obvious interpretation is that different kinds of emotions induce different degrees of presence in a computermediated environment. This is important, because high presence requires and demands a high level of attention. Depending on the nature of the application, this may or may not be appropriate (for example, most mobile phone applications should not demand much attention, since the user is often engaged in other activities concurrently.
When considering presence it is also important to consider its opposite, absence (Waterworth and Waterworth 2001), the feeling of being absorbed in an internallygenerated world of thought and imagination. We often feel absent from the real world, as in the archetypal case of the “absent-minded professor”, but also from the virtual world of a computer application – when our attention wanders from the portrayed world to the internal world of the imagination. Although this has often been ignored in the literature on mediated presence, it is as important to study the impact emotion has on absence as it is to study its impact on presence, and how the two are related.
We have recently extended our view of presence versus absence into a biocultural theory of presence (Riva et al. 2004) which we suggest has the potential to be used as a base in order to discuss the relation between computer-mediated presence and emotion and its impact on designing HCI. Our three-layer model of presence, see figure 2, can provide a starting point for predicting whether a design with emotional effects will bring about a certain degree of presence or absence. The three layers are proto-presence at the sensori-motor level, core presence at the perceptual level, and extended presence at the conceptual level.
Figure 2. A 3-layer model of Presence (Riva, Waterworth and Waterworth. 2004)
According to this model, the overall presence level depends on how well integrated the cognitive system is to focus on the environment around the individual. Emotion can affect this in several different ways, for example, by creating an arousing effect that orientates the individual to attend to the environment (stimulating presence) from the bottom up. On the other hand, emotion induced at higher levels may increase attention to the environment or reduce it, depending on whether the content is associated with the current environment or opposed to it.
As reported earlier in tests with the Exploratorium (Olsson and Waterworth, 2004) we found that Paradiso, which is experienced as a pleasant and calm environment, produced a low degree of presence; it also produced a high degree of absence, in which participants reported day dreaming or other cognitive activity not related to directly perceiving the environment. In the Inferno, on the other hand, which users experienced as both unpleasant and exciting, a high degree of presence and a low degree of absence were reported.
As a designer one should obviously be aware of the emotional impact of a design will have on its user and to try to evoke the most suitable emotion for the purpose of the design. In this, it is useful to consider the different levels of the psyche at which emotion may be induced. At the lowest layer (proto presence), emotional responses may include a sensory orientation towards or away from the environment; a very transitor y effect, but one which may result in the recruitment of other layers to increase either presence or absence. At the highest layer (extended presence), the content displayed in an environment will reinforce or inhibit attention to the environment or to other (non-present) conceptualisations. Unless the middle layer, of perception (core presence), is aligned to one or both of the other layers, the sense of presence induced will be limited, though this is not necessarily a bad thing.
As biological organisms, we have no evolved mechanisms that can distinguish the real from the virtual. What we do have are faculties which attempt to separate the external from the internal, the plausible from the implausible, and the pleasant from the unpleasant, all in the service of survival. In our future research we will be exploring further the relation between presence and emotion in HCI, but with a greater emphasis on everyday memories and mixed reality blends of the real and the virtual. As we increasingly live in and through such blends, the answers to our three “questions of survival” become less and less obvious!
References
Olsson, S. andWaterworth, E. L. (2004). Does the Exploratorium Evoke Emotion? Proceedings of Design and Emotion 2004, Ankara, Turkey, July 2004.
Riva G., Waterworth J.A., Waterworth E.L. (2004). The Layers of Presence: A Biocultural Approach to Understanding Presence in Natural and Mediated Environments. CyberPsychology & Behavior 7 (4), 402-416.
Waterworth, E L and Waterworth J A (2001) Focus, Locus and Sensus: the 3 Dimensions of Virtual Experience. Cyberpsychology and Behavior 4 (2) 203-214
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