Relieving gloominess through non-verbal communication and social support from loved ones at a distance

Abstract

Loved ones play a crucial role in people’s happiness by regulating interpersonal affect to maintain and build relationships (Niven et al., 2012). Something existing services and mediated technologies do not cover as desired: leaving out the more subtle and often non-verbal communication qualities that bring warmth and positive mood-regulating effects.

In this thesis, I explore through a literature study and user research how loved ones can help regulate a gloomy mood when they are apart. This exploration resulted in a solution space with different possible directions. Through brainstorming, ideating, using the non-verbal cues of sympathy found during user research, and clustering these ideas, a final concept direction was chosen through a Harris profile. This evaluation resulted in the final concept direction, which was prototyped and tested further into the final design: Uppie. This final design is prototyped and evaluated through a final user test to validate the design and gather new insights.

Explorations of the topic showed that it is challenging for a gloomy person to talk about their mood, lacking communication channels for social support. This resulted in the final design goal and direction to let a gloomy person feel more comfortable sharing their gloomy mood with their loved ones over a distance by receiving non-verbal cues of sympathy from loved ones while sharing the need for social support in a gloomy mood.

Through Uppie a gloomy person can share their gloominess indirectly by asking for a hug through hugging Uppie. A loved one can respond by hugging back, which is felt through vibrations. These vibrations are dynamic and change depending on how the user holds Uppie, mimicking the loved one being close. The final evaluation showed how Uppie does comfort a person in a gloomy mood to share this mood in not having to talk to ask for support. And in hugging Uppie, the loved one shows they have their full attention available, making the gloomy person receive the sympathy and the initial social support of the loved one at a distance. The gloomy person can start relieving their gloominess through social support. Enable loved ones to communicate comfortably and stay connected in the physical world, even at a distance.