Text chat applications are an integral part of daily social and professional communication. However, messages sent over text chat applications do not convey vocal or nonverbal information from the sender, and detecting the emotional tone in text-only messages is challenging. In this paper, we explore the effects of speech balloon shapes on the sender-receiver agreement regarding the emotionality of a text message. We first investigated the relationship between the shape of a speech balloon and the emotionality of speech text in Japanese manga. Based on these results, we created a system that automatically generates speech balloons matching linear emotional arousal intensity by Auxiliary Classifier Generative Adversarial Networks (ACGAN). Our evaluation results from a controlled experiment suggested that the use of emotional speech balloons outperforms the use of emoticons in decreasing the differences between message senders’ and receivers’ perceptions about the level of emotional arousal in text messages.

We present ForceStamps, fiducial markers for supporting rapid prototyping of physical control interfaces on pressure-sensitive touch surfaces. We investigate marker design options for supporting various physical controls, with focusing on creating dedicated footprints and maintaining the structural stability. ForceStamps can be persistently tracked on surfaces along with the force information and other attributes. Designers without knowledge of electronics can rapidly prototype physical controls by attaching mechanisms to ForceStamps, while manipulating the haptic feedback with buffer materials. The created control widgets can be spatially configured on the touch surface to make an interface layout. We showcase a variety of example controls created with ForceStamps. In addition, we report on our analysis of a two-day musical instrument design workshop to explore the affordances of ForceStamps for making novel instruments with diverse interaction designs.