Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) technologies offer new possibilities for studying embodied interaction with different sets of constraints and affordances for action-taking while using one’s physical body. In this study, we designed and prototyped a VR dance experience, Virtual Dance Mirror, where a dancer’s bodily movements are reflected on a 3D avatar model using a motion-capture suit. We investigated the novel possibilities for avatar design based on the expression of movements available for dancers in VR environment. After a preliminary briefing session, we conducted a user-study with five dancers with semi-structured interviews. Our findings support HCI literature on virtual body design to facilitate collaboration and non-verbal communication between VR users.

In a future when augmented vision becomes a part of our daily lives, some might want or need to highlight their emotions by visuals on or around their bodies like wearing a prosthesis or an expressive make-up. This might especially be useful for situations where one cannot express their own emotions or read others'. To help the design process of affective augmentations, we developed EMOTE; an online interactive tool that presents a framework to guide designers while designing emotion visualizations for AR. We conducted an online workshop with 24 participants to evaluate the framework and the online tool. In this paper, we share insights on user experience with this tool, the effect of framework on the design process and how the framework can be expanded.

It is common not be fully aware of our experience of emotions, and sometimes it is hard to communicate our emotions to others. Using design strategies derived from ambiguity and performativity, we came up with the concept of Isles of Emotion, customizable abstract virtual spaces that represent emotions. Considering remote communication as one of the potential use cases, we assessed this concept as an emotional reflection and communication tool via user studies conducted with 6 pairs of closely related people who have lived apart in the near past. During the studies participants created their own emotion islands using VR tools and visited their own and their pair's islands. We contribute to the existing literature by sharing resulting design insights on emotionally expressive social virtual spaces, commenting on the level of abstraction from and connections to the real-world, sharing and collaboration concerning the islands and their customizability.

Self-reflection is evaluation of one’s inferential processes often triggered by complex social and emotional experiences, characterized by their ambiguity and unpredictability, pushing one to re-interpret the experience, and update existing knowledge. Using immersive Virtual Reality (VR), we aimed to support social and emotional learning (SEL) through reflection in psychology education. We used the case of psychosis as it involves ambiguous perceptual experiences. With a codesign workshop, we designed a VR prototype that simulates the perceptual, cognitive, affective, and social elements of psychotic experiences, followed by a user-study with psychology students to evaluate the potential of this technology to support reflection. Our analyses suggested that technology-mediated reflection in SEL involves two dimensions: spontaneous perspective-taking and shared state of affect. By exploring the subjective qualities of reflection with the said dimensions, our work contributes to the literature on technology-supported learning and VR developers designing for reflection.

Designing for emotional expression has become a popular topic of study in HCI due to advances in affective computing technologies. With increasing use of video-conferencing and video use in social media for different needs such as leisure, work, social communication, video filters, AR effects and holograms are also getting popular. In this paper, we suggest a framework for emotion visualization for natural user interface technologies such as Augmented or Mixed Reality. The framework has been developed based on our analysis of visualizations formed during a series of emotion visualization workshops.

—Emotion is a concept that is very familiar to all of us but has been proven to be hard to define, not only to other people but also through artificial systems. There are many approaches to modeling emotions, some of them theoretical/qualitative and some of them computational. It is hard to integrate qualitative models into empirical studies, as the concepts they define are hard to measure. On the other hand, computational models are usually developed for practical purposes and do not comprehensively describe emotions; which makes them suitable in applied fields but not when probing the nature of emotions. Based on earlier work, we argue that it is possible to develop an emotion model that is both quantitative and comprehensive. Here, we talk about existing connections between emotions and mathematical theories: information theory, game theory, set theory, dynamical systems and hope to inspire future research on mathematics based comprehensive emotion models.

We bring the concepts of emotional self-awareness and emotion sharing to the problem space of Mixed Reality and by adding our observations on the influence of the physical space on emotions, we speculate whether we can mediate the spatial experiences of collocated people to increase their emotional self-awareness and ease emotion sharing between them. Our study is structured around a conceptual system we designed, one that mediates the spatial attributes of the surroundings according to the user's and collocated people's emotional states. After the initial ideation of the concept, we built a prototype application for HoloLens. We then conducted a 2-legged user study with 12 participants; first we gathered data using an online survey, followed by a study with thinking aloud protocol using the prototype. We believe that the results and discussion we provide in this paper will be useful in development of emotionally aware Mixed Reality systems.

We bring the concepts of emotional self-awareness and emotion sharing to the problem space of Mixed Reality and by adding our observations on the influence of the physical space on emotions, we speculate whether we can mediate the spatial experiences of collocated people to increase their emotional self-awareness and ease emotion sharing between them. Our study is structured around a conceptual system we designed, one that mediates the spatial attributes of the surroundings according to the user's and collocated people's emotional states. After the initial ideation of the concept, we built a prototype application for HoloLens. We then conducted a 2-legged user study with 12 participants; first we gathered data using an online survey, followed by a study with thinking aloud protocol using the prototype. We believe that the results and discussion we provide in this paper will be useful in development of emotionally aware Mixed Reality systems.

This paper speculates and explores how emotional awareness and communication can be enhanced with the mediation of spatial experience. Based on two exploratory user studies, we designed and prototyped a conceptual system that mediates the spatial attributes of the surroundings according to user's choices and their emotional state. We then conducted user studies with the prototype. We contribute to existing literature by sharing our insights into potential use cases and implications of an emotionally responsive space.