Evaluating Affective User Experience

User experience from emotional or affective perspectives is not well understood when the primary goal is to entertain or invoke emotional response. Traditional productivity measures are often not applicable to games, animations, or new media. A robust suite of methods to evaluate affective user experience will address these unique challenges.

Models of affect based on users’ physiological signals (cardiac rate, galvanic skin response, brain activity, eye gaze, blink patterns, pupil diameter, and muscular activity) and less invasive approaches (facial expression, thermographic imaging,  interactive behavioural measures, and subjective responses) will be validated in laboratory and real-world settings to reduce time-to-market and risk for new digital media products.

AFEVAL will provide better tools for testing the emotional impact of games and other digital media products to reduce development costs.