eMoto - Interaction design

To focus on subjective experience of emotions we have used a dimensional model of emotions (Russell 1980) to let users combine their gestures with various emotional expressions. Both gestures and graphical expressions used in eMoto are designed from the analysis of emotional body language. From the analysis it became apparent that even though negative and positive emotions not always differ in terms of effort, most negative emotions have more tense expressions. Therefore the affective gestures in eMoto are set up as combinations of valence in terms of pressure and effort communicated through movement; the figure above presents the four extreme gestures, however, in between those extremes there can be a whole range of combinations of movement and pressure.

The graphical expressions are non-symbolic and constructed from what is known about the effects of colors, shapes and animations. The purpose of the graphical expressions is to give feedback to the user's gestures and therefore they are both designed from the same emotional model. They are also to be used as backgrounds in text messages. However, to allow for personality and open interpretation there is no indication of what emotions various expressions were designed from, that is up to the user to decide.