Voice is a rich modality for conveying emotions, however emotional prosody production can be situationally or medically impaired. Since thermal displays have been shown to evoke emotions, we explore how thermal stimulation can augment perception of neutrally-spoken voice messages with affect. We designed ThermalWear, a wearable on-chest thermal display, then tested in a controlled study (N=12) the effects of fabric, thermal intensity, and direction of change. Thereafter, we synthesized 12 neutrally-spoken voice messages, validated (N=7) them, then tested (N=12) if thermal stimuli can augment their perception with affect. We found warm and cool stimuli (a) can be perceived on the chest, and quickly without fabric (4.7-5s) (b) do not incur discomfort (c) generally increase arousal of voice messages and (d) increase / decrease message valence, respectively. We discuss how thermal displays can augment voice perception, which can enhance voice assistants and support individuals with emotional prosody impairments.

Millions of photos are shared online daily, but the richness of interaction compared with face-to-face (F2F) sharing is still missing. While this may change with social Virtual Reality (socialVR), we still lack tools to measure such immersive and interactive experiences. In this paper, we investigate photo sharing experiences in immersive environments, focusing on socialVR. Running context mapping (N=10), an expert creative session (N=6), and an online experience clustering questionnaire (N=20), we develop and statistically evaluate a questionnaire to measure photo sharing experiences. We then ran a controlled, within-subject study (N=26 pairs) to compare photo sharing under F2F, Skype, and Facebook Spaces. Using interviews, audio analysis, and our questionnaire, we found that socialVR can closely approximate F2F sharing. We contribute empirical findings on the immersiveness differences between digital communication media, and propose a socialVR questionnaire that can in the future generalize beyond photo sharing.