Affective Laboratory

Researches on communication technology have mainly focused on how to transmit as much information as possible to remote sites reliably. In other words, their efforts have been made towards conveying as realistic and as high-quality information as possible to remote counterparts. As a result, in today’s workplaces, videoconference systems using high-speed lines and high-definition imaging technology are conveying realistic vision of your colleagues on the other side of the earth. However, when you look at home settings, is the communication technology today connecting our minds with our loved ones? For example, are cell phones and e-mails nowadays connecting hearts of family members living far apart? If you introduce a high-definition videoconference system into between homes of you and your family, can you feel stronger bond?

Communication systems that connect hearts of people far apart and make them warm-hearted feeling emotional bonds with counterparts can be called affective communication. Those kinds of communication might not be those that convey true and accurate information of users, such as videoconference systems in workplaces. Then what is the difference between communication systems that can make people smile and those in workplaces? Factors essential for affective communication should be clarified in future study, and actual systems realizing those factors should also be proposed in order to demonstrate the significance of this idea in our life.

source: Umemuro, H. (2009). Affective technology, affective management, towards affective society. Proceedings of The 13th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI International 2009).