Uma abordagem híbrida para a avaliação da experiência emocional de usuários

Abstract

The emotions triggered during the use of an interactive system are an important aspect of the user experience. It is known that the emotions affect attention, perception, memory, behavior, learning, purchasing decisions, among others. Methods for evaluating the emotions are based on users self-report or assessments by experts. However, users are not always able to verbally express, name, or choose something that represents their emotions. In addition, experts can also perform partial or inaccurate assessments about the emotional experience. Thus, providing the designer with an alternative way to assess emotions and their impact on emotional experience, considering both views, allows a more comprehensive assessment and, it is believed, can minimize the problems encountered by unilateral evaluations. This study developed a hybrid approach to evaluate the impact of emotions in the emotional experience of users in a context of interaction with computer systems that considered: (a) the different aspects of emotion: cognitive appraisals, subjective feelings, behavioral tendencies, motor expressions and physiological responses, (b) different views including: users (the experience they communicate) and specialists (the experience they observe) and (c) assessments during and after the interaction time. The results of the pilot study suggest that the hybrid approach offers to the designer an alternative way of assessing the user`s emotional experience, through a collective analysis of the results obtained from the individual evaluations by experts and users, thus, leading to a more comprehensive assessment.