Affective Laboratory

Today, products should not only be excellent in the conventional aspects of multi-functionality and usability any more, but also be those that users themselves want to use and continue to use: products to make owners pleased and be proud of their owning, products that are comfortable and enjoyable in use, and/or products that provide remarkable affective experience such as excitement and deep satisfaction. Such technological products and services can be affective technologies.

There are a number of questions to be answered in order to create such affective technologies. Firstly, in what situations or conditions do people experience affective experiences such as fun or pleasure in the context of technology usage? Secondly, what factors of technological products and services might evoke affects? Furthermore, some of affective responses, especially higher ones, are expected to vary across individuals significantly. Thus individual differences in affective responses and its consideration in design should also be studied.

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