Temperature has strong potential to mediate emotion in a range of contexts; augmenting sensory experience and/or supporting emotion regulation. Hence, there is growing interest in leveraging thermal cues for affective technologies. At present, however, the design space for thermal technologies for emotion regulation remains underexplored and largely undefined. We construct a design space for thermal affective emotion regulation technologies, clarifying the rich, expressive nature of thermal cues as a design material. We develop this through a Research through Design (RtD) approach, grounded in an 18-month autoethnographic inquiry based on the first author’s emotion regulation practice. We contribute a structured design space for thermal affective interaction, linking experience and design implementation with designerly know-how. By discussing the creation of this design space we provide insights into the generative process of developing intermediate-level knowledge from autoethnographic study and design practice.

Much work in HCI has investigated strategies for supporting autonomous self-regulation in social media use (SMU): helping users to control their time online and ensure it serves personally valued outcomes. However, results suggest that the effectiveness and acceptability of these strategies may vary based on individual needs. Recent work has attributed this variation to motivational factors, though we currently lack data to understand how these factors influence self-regulation, user experience and well-being. We draw on Self-Determination Theory to analyse autonomous and non-autonomous patterns of motivation in 521 users of social media. Using latent profile analysis, we identify 4 "motivational profiles"associated with significant differences in need satisfaction, affect, and compulsive engagement. Our results clarify distinct aspects of autonomy in SMU and identify opportunities to target and personalise design interventions; they suggest autonomous regulation can be associated with better experience and well-being, though not necessarily less time online.

ABSTRACT

People often use multiple communication apps concurrently for messaging, yet how they use these channels together and the motivations for switching between them remain underexplored. To investigate this, we conducted a two-week diary study followed by interviews (N=17), examining channel-switching practices and the management of social boundaries. Our findings reveal that users switch between multiple communication channels with the same contacts, driven by factors such as different topics, expectations for fast or slow communication rhythm, specific features suited to the situation, and app-specific vibes that match their mood at the moment. Additionally, we identify inertia, where users tend to stay on the app where the last interaction occurred, as the opposite of active channel switching. Our findings show that users do not actively distinguish apps based on relationships. Instead, their contacts are dispersed across different communication apps due to adaptive behaviors. These behaviors include users continually adapting to unique relationships, evolving communication needs, and app changes over time. Based on these insights, we propose design implications for multichannel communication to help users manage cross-app communication flows effectively.

Thermal-affective experience is a growing topic in Human-Computer Interaction. However, research linking thermal and affective experience in technology use has not moved beyond attempts to establish broad, sweeping associations, such as between warmth and positive affect. One of the obstacles to progression is the need for frameworks and vocabularies that describe and conceptualise the richness of thermal perception and affective experience. To help conceptualise associations between thermal perception and affective experience we turn to Cí poetry, a form of classical Chinese literature rich with evocative descriptions of embodied, environmentally situated, first-person experience. We conducted a lexical analysis to identify thermal-affective associations, and propose a design framework addressing thermal design. We demonstrate the value of this framework via analysis of existing thermal design exemplars.

With the proliferation of shape-change research in affective computing, there is a need to deepen understandings of affective responses to shape-change display. Little research has focused on affective reactions to tactile experiences in shape-change, particularly in the absence of visual information. It is also rare to study response to the shape-change as it unfolds, isolated from a final shape-change outcome. We report on two studies on touch-affect associations, using the crossmodal “Bouba-Kiki” paradigm, to understand affective responses to shape-change as it unfolds. We investigate experiences with a shape-change gadget, as it moves between rounded (“Bouba”) and spiky (“Kiki”) forms. We capture affective responses via the circumplex model, and use a motion analysis approach to understand the certainty of these responses. We find that touch-affect associations are influenced by both the size and the frequency of the shape-change and may be modality-dependent, and that certainty in affective associations is influenced by association-consistency.

With increasing interest in multisensory experiences in HCI there is a need to consider the potential impact of crossmodal correspondences (CCs) between sensory modalities on perception and interpretation. We investigated CCs between active haptic experiences of tangible 3D objects, visual colour and emotion using the “Bouba/Kiki” paradigm. We asked 30 participants to assign colours and emotional categories to 3D-printed objects with varying degrees of angularity and complexity. We found tendencies to associate high degrees of complexity and angularity with red colours, low brightness and high arousal levels. Less complex round shapes were associated with blue colours, high brightness and positive valence levels. These findings contrast previously reported crossmodal effects triggered by 2D shapes of similar angularity and complexity, suggesting that designers cannot simply extrapolate potential perceptual and interpretive experiences elicited by 2D shapes to seemingly similar 3D tangible objects. Instead, we propose a design space for creating tangible multisensory artefacts that can trigger specific emotional percepts and discuss implications for exploiting CCs in the design of interactive technology.

There is a growing research interest in combining crossmodal research with tangible interaction design. However, most behavioural research on crossmodal perception and on multimodal tangible interaction evaluation are based on static and non-interactive signals. Grounded in the cognitive neuroscience studies and behavioural research on multisensory perception, we present two interactive, dynamic crossmodal studies based on unimodal and crossmodal physical dimensions through an interactive table-top. We tested the implementation in two user studies. Results indicate that first, dynamic crossmodal congruency was spontaneously invoked during the tangible interaction and elicited better user performance than uni-modal instantiation in the conditions involving vision and haptics, second, crossmodal instantiations using all three modalities may not produce the best user performance in the interaction, and third, participant's subconscious reaction towards perceived stimuli during interaction may not always consistent with their explicit verbalization.