产品情感基因片段的秘密

较高层次的产品设计不再是单纯功能满足和简单外观审美,情感因素就像生命体的一个基因片段,它决定着产品某些外部表征,也是产品能和使用者之间进行思想、情绪交流的本质基础。只有探索了产品情感基因的奥秘,设计师们才能运用它来设计出更能打动人产品。     

Speech synthesis of emotions using vowel features of a speaker

Recently, methods for adding emotion to synthetic speech have received considerable attention in the field of speech synthesis research. We previously proposed a case-based method for generating emotional synthetic speech by exploiting the characteristics of the maximum amplitude and the utterance time of vowels, and the fundamental frequency of emotional speech. In the present study, we propose a method in which our reported method is further improved by controlling the fundamental frequency of emotional synthetic speech. As an initial investigation, we adopted the utterance of a Japanese name that is semantically neutral. By using the proposed method, emotional synthetic speech made from the emotional speech of one male subject was discriminable with a mean accuracy of 83.9 % when 18 subjects listened to the emotional synthetic utterances of “angry,” “happy,” “neutral,” “sad,” or “surprised” when the utterance was the Japanese name “Taro,” or “Hiroko.” Further adjustment of fundamental frequency in the proposed method made a much clearer impression on the subjects for emotional synthetic speech.     

A Gestalt-like perceptual measure for home page design using a fuzzy entropy approach

A home page is an entry interface of hyperdocuments for presenting a Website's information to visitors, which is mostly concerned with human perception in terms of users’ comprehension and mental representation. As the theory of Gestalt psychology provides an important perspective in human perception, it is appropriate to apply this theory in evaluating the “wholeness” of a perceptual image. In home page design, organizing the visual pattern on the basis of Gestalt principles can lead to an efficient model for a better perception. However, human perception referring to the non-quantifiable, subjective, and affect-based experience is difficult to be objectively and uniformly measured by a conventional research approach. In this paper, we propose a Gestalt-like perceptual measure method by combining Gestalt grouping principles and fuzzy entropy. The purpose of this proposed method is not to evaluate the grades of alternatives, but to measure the Gestalt-like perceptual degrees for home page design. An experimental study was conducted to evaluate the practicability of this method. In Part 1 of the experiment, the weights of evaluated criteria were identified through the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) operation. A Gestalt-like perceptual measure for six selected home pages was further implemented in Part 2 of the experiment. The experimental study has shown a credible result. In addition to measuring the Gestalt perception of a Web page design, the proposed method can also be applied to related design fields such as plane design and other visual interface design.     

基于互联网情感特征的 Web 界面设计新思略

网络技术以及硬件设备的飞速发展,带来互联网用户阅读与思维习惯的转变,呈 现出越来越明显的女性化思维特征,即互联网的感性化、体验化、去中心化的思维特征。互联 网女性化思维特征实际上是用户在视觉感知、情感交互以及多元架构上的诉求,创新性 Web 界 面设计的研究主要目标是为了给用户提供更好的沉浸式的体验与服务。因此,以用户行为核心 流程的研究为切入点,通过分析互联网女性化思维现象;研究互联网用户的需求特性,结合案 例从提升信息感召力;促进用户情感共鸣;建立面向未来的智能多元服务系统三方面,探讨创 新性 Web 界面设计策略与实现方法。     

What Interactivity Means to the User Essential Insights into and a Scale for Perceived Interactivity

The selection and use of media depend largely on how users perceive such media. A central aspect of the “new media” is their interactivity, but how users perceive this phenomenon has rarely been researched. This study provides an in‐depth investigation into the perception component of interactivity and develops a compact scale for its measurement. According to psychological approaches, practical uses (affordances) – not physical or technical characteristics – guide perception. While existing scales mostly measure whether the “interactive” technical features of devices or websites are noticed, our instrument is based on the affordances that interactivity provides. Consequently, a new research design, the use‐identified meaning, was implemented. This is the first study on interactivity that empirically examines a wide range of Internet‐based services, thus meeting the broad ambit of interactivity. Our results generally validate the existing constructs, which are largely based on technical characteristics, yet provide additional insights into the relevant contexts and the subjective significance of different aspects of interactivity.     

基于模糊聚类的“愤怒”表情细分方法研究

伴随情感计算和人机交互界面的快速发展,计算机的情感识别能力受到越来越多的关注。近年来针对面部表情识别存在很多方法,然而对于表情层次的细分研究却不多。目前网约车司机以及公交乘客的情绪失控情况无法被摄像头监控系统及时检测,该研究有助于此问题的解决。文中针对"愤怒"表情进行层次细分研究。首先通过RBF神经网络进行大类情绪识别,然后从已识别‘愤怒’情绪的多帧视频图像样本中选取出部分连续的图像样本。接着把选取出的连续样本进行融合聚类,确定初始聚类中心个数。最后通过自适应神经模糊推理系统(adaptive neural-based fuzzy inference system,ANFIS)对识别出的愤怒表情进行打分,分值越高愤怒程度越高。创新点在于情绪样本图片的选取上,基于人的情绪是有一定生成过程,选取同一个人"愤怒"时的连续多张图片作为样本。通过实验结果证明了该方法的有效性。     

Disentangling utilitarian and hedonic consumption behavior in online shopping: An expectation disconfirmation perspective

Increasingly, researchers have come to acknowledge that consumption activities entail both utilitarian and hedonic components. Whereas utilitarian consumption accentuates the achievement of predetermined outcomes typical of cognitive consumer behavior, its hedonic counterpart relates to affective consumer behavior in dealing with the emotive and multisensory aspects of the shopping experience. Consequently, while utilitarian consumption activities appeal to the rationality of customers in inducing their intellectual buy-in of the shopping experience, customers’ corresponding emotional buy-in can only be attained through the presence of hedonic consumption activities. The same can be said for online shopping. Because the online shopping environment is characterized by the existence of an IT-enabled web interface that acts as the focal point of contact between customers and vendors, its design should embed utilitarian and hedonic elements to create a holistic shopping experience. Building on Expectation Disconfirmation Theory (EDT), this study advances a research model that not only delineates between customers’ utilitarian and hedonic expectations for online shopping but also highlights how these expectations can be best served through functional and esthetic performance, respectively. Furthermore, we introduce online shopping experience (i.e., transactional frequency) as a moderator affecting not only how customers form utilitarian and hedonic expectations but also how they evaluate the functional and esthetic performances of e-commerce sites. The model is then empirically validated via an online survey questionnaire administered on a sample of 303 respondents. Theoretical contributions and pragmatic implications to be gleaned from our research model and its subsequent empirical validation are discussed.     

Image-Based Tactile Emojis: Improved Interpretation of Message Intention and Subtle Nuance for Visually Impaired Individuals

To enhance missing nonverbal cues in computer-mediated communication using text, those who can see often use emojis or emoticons. Although emojis for the sighted have transformed throughout the years to animated forms and added sound effects, emojis for visually impaired people remain underdeveloped. This study tested how tactile emojis based on visual imagery combined with the Braille system can enhance clarity in the computer-mediated communication environment for those with visual impairments. Results of this study confirmed three things: Visually impaired subjects were able to connect emotional emojis to the emotion they represented without any prior guidance, image-based (picture-based) and non-image-based (abstraction-based) tactile emoji were equally learnable, and the clarity of intended meaning was improved when an emoji was used with text (Braille). Thirty visually impaired subjects were able to match an average of 67% of emotions without prior guidance, and three of the four subjects who matched perfectly both before and after guidance were congenitally blind. The subjects had the most trouble discriminating the facial feature of “fear” between “sadness” or “surprised” for they shared similar traits. After guidance, the image-based tactile design elicited an average of 81% correct answers, whereas the non-image-based tactile design elicited an average of 37%, showing that the image-based tactile design was more effective for learning the meaning of emojis. The clarity of the sentence was also improved. This study shows that image-based tactile emojis can improve the texting experience of visually impaired individuals to a level where they can communicate subtle emotional cues through tactile imagery. This advance could minimize the service gap between sighted and visually impaired people and offer a much more abundant computer-mediated communication environment for visually impaired individuals.     

Using event-related potentials to identify user emotion caused by product color attribute

The accurate quantification of the correlation between product color attributes and user emotions is the key to product color emotional design (PCED). However, the traditional method of emotion quantification is subjective, one-sided, and contingent, which reduces the reliability of the research results. To this end, this paper proposes a method for PCED based on the quantification of electroencephalogram (EEG) physiological indicators. A medical product, namely an infant incubator, is used as the experimental stimulus samples, and “unsafe-safe” is used as the perceptual imager word pair to conduct EEG measurement experiments of the user's emotional state. Two types of data are obtained in the experiment, namely behavioral data and EEG data. Via the analysis of the two types of data, the EEG physiological characteristic indicators (the event-related potentials (ERPs) components) are obtained, which can explain the user’s emotional cognitive mechanism. Finally, the relationship between the user’s emotional state and EEG characteristics under the influence of product color attributes is explored. The conclusions are as follows. (1) The “safety” emotional value of the two-color samples is higher than that of the three-color samples, which indicates that the simpler the color matching, the higher the safety emotion attribute of the samples. (2) Via the study of the three attributes of hue, lightness, and chroma in the assistant colors of the two-color samples, it is found that when the hue attributes of the samples are red, cyan, and blue, the safety emotional value is higher; moreover, the higher the lightness attribute and the chroma attribute, the higher the safety emotion. Research on the two color attribute dimensions of hue harmony and color tone harmony between the auxiliary color of the three-color samples and the embellishment color revealed that the more consistent the hue harmony, the higher the safety emotion, and the more significant the difference in the color tone harmony, the higher the safety emotion. (3) The reaction time data in the behavioral data demonstrate that the participants had the longest average reaction time under neutral emotions. (4) The results of the time–frequency analysis of the EEG data reveal that there are apparent mid-to-early ERPs components between 100 and 300 ms after the appearance of the stimulus samples. The ERPs component analysis results show that the P1 component can reflect the emotional valence to a certain extent; the higher the amplitude of the P1 component, the more pronounced the negative emotions of the participants, and the lower the safety emotional evaluation value of the two-color samples, the higher the amplitude of the P1 component. Moreover, the N2 and P3 components can reflect the degree of emotional arousal to a certain extent, and the increase in their amplitude indicates the more substantial emotion of the participant; furthermore, the correlation between N2 and emotional arousal is higher. The two-color and three-color experiments revealed that the more neutral the emotional state, the lower the amplitudes of N2 and P3. This research is expected to provide a theoretical foundation and experimental data basis for PCED methods based on EEG physiological indicators.     

情感化的产品设计方法

随着社会的发展与生活水平的提高,产品被赋予的含义逐渐增多,既要满足使用要求,还要满足使用者的情感需求。文章从这个角度出发,从本能水平、行为水平和反思水平三个层次上论述了情感化的产品设计方法。该方法力求产品设计能把注意力更多地集中到产品的情感性方面,更加注重产品本身的情感特征和使用者的情感、心理反应方面,借此创造一种轻松简约富于情感化的生活方式。     

The Role of Body Postures in the Recognition of Emotions in Contextually Rich Scenarios

In this article the role of different categories of postures in the detection, recognition, and interpretation of emotion in contextually rich scenarios, including ironic items, is investigated. Animated scenarios are designed with 3D virtual agents in order to test 3 conditions: In the “still” condition, the narrative content was accompanied by emotional facial expressions without any body movements; in the “idle” condition, emotionally neutral body movements were introduced; and in the “congruent” condition, emotional body postures congruent with the character's facial expressions were displayed. Those conditions were examined by 27 subjects, and their impact on the viewers’ attentional and emotional processes was assessed. The results highlight the importance of the contextual information to emotion recognition and irony interpretation. It is also shown that both idle and emotional postures improve the detection of emotional expressions. Moreover, emotional postures increase the perceived intensity of emotions and the realism of the animations.     

A case study of intended versus actual experience of adaptivity in a tangible storytelling system

This article presents a case study of an adaptive, tangible storytelling system called “The Reading Glove”. The research addresses a gap in the field of adaptivity for ubiquitous systems by taking a critical look at the notion of “adaptivity” and how users experience it. The Reading Glove is an interactive storytelling system featuring a wearable, glove-based interface and a set of narratively rich objects. A tabletop display provides adaptive recommendations which highlight objects to select next, functioning as an expert storytelling system. The recommendation engine can be run in three different configurations to examine the effects of different adaptive methods. The study of the design process as well as the user experience of the Reading Glove allows us to develop a deeper understanding of the experience of adaptivity that is useful for designers of intelligent systems, particularly those with ubiquitous and tangible forms of interaction.     

Product interface design: A participatory approach based on virtual reality

The usability of the user interface is a key aspect for the success of several industrial products. This assumption has led to the introduction of numerous design methodologies addressed to evaluate the user-friendliness of industrial products. Most of these methodologies follow the participatory design approach to involve the user in the design process. Virtual Reality is a valid tool to support Participatory Design, because it facilitates the collaboration among designers and users.The present study aims to evaluate the feasibility and the efficacy of an innovative Participatory Design approach where Virtual Reality plays a ‘double role’: a tool to evaluate the usability of the virtual product interface, and a communication channel that allows users to be directly involved in the design process as co-designers.In order to achieve these goals, we conducted three experiments: the purpose of the first experiment is to determine the influence of the virtual interface on the usability evaluation by comparing “user–real product” interaction and “user–virtual product” interaction. Subsequently, we tested the effectiveness of our approach with two experiments involving users (directly or through their participation in a focus group) in the redesign of a product user interface. The experiments were conducted with two typologies of consumer appliances: a microwave oven and a washing machine.     

The impact of a computerized conferencing system on the productivity of scientific research communities

Researchers and practitioners in the field of information and communication technologies (ICT) have for a while been embracing the concepts of user and consumer experience as well as emotions in design, encouraging the industry to emphasise hedonic and symbolic qualities of products and services, over and beyond their utilitarian characteristics. However, the idea that mobile phone users, for instance, seek increasingly experience-rich, personalised products can not be taken for granted. Therefore, it is valuable to investigate the degree to which users really share designers' increasingly socio-emotional stances. The presented longitudinal study investigated users' mobile phone-related product meaning, particularly its development from 2004 to 2008. Product meaning was conceptualised in terms of an affective-cognizant choice mode dimension complemented by items capturing utilitarian, hedonic, and symbolic facets of the construct. The findings provide grounds for raising an important discussion about a possible pragmatic shift in product meaning, away from emotional and holistic, towards piecemeal and rational valuation. This would obviously challenge current design maxims. Linking these results to users' personality and mobile phone ownership history, subgroups with notably dissimilar product meaning development could be distinguished mainly with regard to levels of neuroticism, extraversion and brand loyalty – however, not gender.     

文本情感对话系统研究综述

对话系统作为人机交互的重要方式,有着广泛的应用前景.现有的对话系统专注于解决语义一致性和内容丰富性等问题,对于提高人机交互以及产生人机共鸣方向的研究关注度不高.如何让生成的语句在具有语义相关性的基础上更自然地与用户交流是当前对话系统面临的主要问题之一.首先对对话系统进行了整体情况的概括.接着介绍了情感对话系统中的对话情...     

Vocal markers of emotion: Comparing induction and acting elicitation

The search for vocal markers of emotion has been hampered by the difficulty of obtaining access to speech samples that represent authentic expressions of the speaker's felt emotions. The recent trend to privilege real-life, naturalistic speech tokens, often obtained by convenience sampling, encounters two major problems: (1) the assumption that speech recorded in the field or from the media is a direct, uncontrolled expression of the speaker's “true” feeling state is unrealistic, given the widespread use of expression control due to display rules and strategic concerns; (2) the use of convenience samples, often of rare events, can engender the neglect of minimal requirements for experimental control of important determinants. Conversely, the use of performance induction of affect allows systematic control of influence factors and shows that even subtle variations of task characteristics and appraisal can produce major paralinguistic differences. The disadvantage of this type of elicitation is that the emotional effects are often weak and vary greatly over individuals. In this paper, the results of a study comparing the effects of an established psychological mood induction technique (the Velten procedure) with a classic acting/portrayal approach on a set of major acoustic parameters are reported. The elicitation of positive/happy and negative/sad utterance through both tasks yields essentially the same differences in both tasks for energy, F0, spectral, and temporal parameters. In comparison, task differences have much less effect. As three different language groups were used, the important effects of the speaker's language, especially in interacting with task and emotion factors, can be demonstrated. It is suggested that enacting studies using professional mental imagery techniques are an important part of the available experimental paradigms, as they allow extensive experimental control and as the results seem to be comparable with other induction techniques. They are especially useful if the purpose of the research is to study the listener attribution of emotion from vocal cues, rather than the diagnosis of symptoms of “true” underlying emotions (which remains elusive and presents a major challenge for future research).     

Affective social network—happiness inducing social media platform

We propose a human emotion regarding social network, namely, the Affective Social Network. Our suggestion firstly builds a user’s emotion profile in terms of the personality, mood and emotion by analysing the user’s activities in social network. This subsequently builds an Emotional Relationship Matrix (ERM) which represents the depth of the emotional relationship based on the emotion profile. From our proposal, the more elaborate services based on the current user’s emotional state can be provided to users. By considering emotional aspects in a social network, we can effectively answer which users or media contents will show the best results for inducing users’ emotional states. From the experiments, we verified that message containing emotional words and users’ relationship in a social network has significant correlations.     

基于情感向量空间模型的歌曲情感标签预测模型

音乐的情感标签预测对音乐的情感分析有着重要的意义。该文提出了一种基于情感向量空间模型的歌曲情感标签预测算法,首先,提取歌词中的情感特征词构建情感空间向量模型,然后利用SVM分类器对已知情感标签的音乐进行训练,通过分类技术找到与待预测歌曲情感主类一致的歌曲集合,最后,通过歌词的情感相似度计算找到最邻近的k首歌曲,将其标签推荐给待预测歌曲。实验发现本文提出的情感向量空间模型和“情感词—情感标签”共现的特征降维方法比传统的文本特征向量模型能够更好地提高歌曲情感分类准确率。同时,在分类基础上进行的情感标签预测方法可以有效地防止音乐“主类情感漂移”,比最近邻居方法达到更好的标签预测准确率。     

The electronic mirror: Human-computer interaction and change in self-appraisals

As computers become increasingly powerful and complex, software designers are employing anthropomorphism to enhance the usability of computer interfaces (i.e., “user-centered” design). The potential for implementing a social mode of interface behavior, however, can only be realized through understanding the role anthropomorphism plays in modifying the behavior and perceptions of users. The present study compares human-like versus machine-like interactional styles of computer interfaces, testing hypotheses that evaluative feedback conveyed through a human-like interface will have greater impact on individuals' self-appraisals. College students received experimentally manipulated positive or negative computerized feedback in response to their performance on a purported “psychic ability” task. In general, computer feedback had considerable impact upon reflected appraisals (participants' perceptions of the computer's evaluations of their performance and ability) as well as upon their self-appraisals of performance and ability. Reflected appraisals were more influenced by computer feedback than were self-appraisals. Human-like and machine-like interface styles did not have significantly different effects.     

Emotional agents: A modeling and an application

This paper proposes modeling of artificial emotions through agents based on symbolic approach. The symbolic approach utilizes symbolic emotional rule-based systems (rule base that generated emotions) with continuous interactions with environment and an internal “thinking” machinery that comes as a result of series of inferences, evaluation, evolution processes, adaptation, learning, and emotions. We build two models for agent based systems; one is supported with artificial emotions and the other one without emotions. We use both in solving a bench mark problem; “The Orphanage Care Problem”. The two systems are simulated and results are compared. Our study shows that systems with proper model of emotions can perform in many cases better than systems without emotions. We try to shed the light here on how artificial emotions can be modeled in a simple rule-based agent systems and if emotions as they exist in “real intelligence” can be helpful for “artificial intelligence”. Agent architectures are presented as a generic blueprint on which the design of agents can be based. Our focus is on the functional design, including flow of information and control. With this information provided, the generic blueprints of architectures should not be difficult to implement agents, thus putting these theoretical models into practice. We build the agents using this architecture, and many experiments and analysis are shown.