Emotional Experience during Human-Computer Interaction: A Survey

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.