Affective interaction: Using emotions as a user interface in games

Abstract

Affective computing, as a novel paradigm, adds a new feature into the human-computer interactions era that brings emotions into the process of design and evaluation. Such condition influences digital games’ not only structural dimension but also content and evaluation areas. This study aims to evaluate the effect of using emotions in the form of facial expressions as a User Interface (UI) and the input of a system in virtual scenarios. After studying the findings and methods of previous researches, a conceptual framework for Affective User Interface Design and Evaluation (AFFUIDE) has been proposed. Then, a game in the genre of shoot ‘em up (called Facial Battle) in four interaction modes has been developed. The evaluation of this study has been performed in terms of the players’ performance and experience. For this purpose, 18 male students of the Multimedia Faculty of Tabriz Islamic Art University took part in the experiments, who were asked to play all four modes of the game. Then, after analyzing the normalization of collected data, one-way ANOVA and U Mann Whitney tests were used for the statistical analysis. The findings indicate that the Traditional UI is the most usable and the Full Affective UI has the best sense of fun and user experience among other methods. However, the hybrid mode (affective shooting), is not only usable as traditional mode, but it also works better in terms of user experience compared to other modes.