Constructing Emotional Machines: A Case of a Smartphone-Based Emotion System

In this study, an emotion system was developed and installed on smartphones to enable them to exhibit emotions. The objective of this study was to explore factors that developers should focus on when developing emotional machines. This study also examined user attitudes and emotions toward emotional...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Hao-Chiang Koong Lin, Yu-Chun Ma, Min Lee
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2021-01-01
Series:Electronics
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/10/3/306
Description
Summary:In this study, an emotion system was developed and installed on smartphones to enable them to exhibit emotions. The objective of this study was to explore factors that developers should focus on when developing emotional machines. This study also examined user attitudes and emotions toward emotional messages sent by machines and the effects of emotion systems on user behavior. According to the results of this study, the degree of attention paid to emotional messages determines the quality of the emotion system, and an emotion system triggers certain behaviors in users. This study recruited 124 individuals with more than one year of smartphone use experience. The experiment lasted for two weeks, during which time participants were allowed to operate the system freely and interact with the system agent. The majority of the participants took interest in emotional messages, were influenced by emotional messages and were convinced that the developed system enabled their smartphone to exhibit emotions. The smartphones generated 11,264 crucial notifications in total, among which 76% were viewed by the participants and 68.1% enabled the participants to resolve unfavorable smartphone conditions in a timely manner and allowed the system agent to provide users with positive emotional feedback.
ISSN:2079-9292