Generative AI systems are increasingly capable of expressing emotions through text, imagery, voice, and video. Effective emotional expression is particularly relevant for AI systems designed to provide care, support mental health, or promote wellbeing through emotional interactions. This research aims to enhance understanding of the alignment between AI-expressed emotions and human perception. How can we assess whether an AI system successfully conveys a specific emotion? To address this question, we designed a method to measure the alignment between emotions expressed by generative AI and human perceptions. Three generative image models—DALL-E 2, DALL-E 3, and Stable Diffusion v1—were used to generate 240 images expressing five positive and five negative emotions in both humans and robots. Twenty-four participants recruited via Prolific rated the alignment of AI-generated emotional expressions with a string of text (e.g., “A robot expressing the emotion of amusement”). Our results suggest that generative AI models can produce emotional expressions that align well with human emotions; however, the degree of alignment varies significantly depending on the AI model and the specific emotion expressed. We analyze these variations to identify areas for future improvement. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of our findings on the design of emotionally expressive AI systems.

Design for mood regulation is an emerging design area that is gaining growing interest. However, there is limited guidance on what designers should consider when creating interventions to support mood regulation. To address this gap, we conducted an exploratory case study focused on the “Sunday Blues”—a common dip in mood experienced at the end of the weekend as the new workweek approaches. We designed WeMo, a system aimed at helping users capture weekend highlights, culminating in a visual summary displayed on Monday. We engaged 15 participants in co-constructing stories around their potential use of the system. Participants expressed frustrations with the system’s features, concerns about its effectiveness, and obstacles to its application in daily life. Based on these insights, we highlight key considerations for designing mood-regulation interventions, such as balancing mood regulation with other fundamental needs, addressing the complex roots of mood, and respecting the acceptance of negative moods. By identifying user concerns and translating them into design considerations, this study provides actionable guidance for practitioners and contributes to the growing body of research in mood-focused design.

Acts of kindness can enhance well-being for both actors and recipients. Consequently, numerous products and technologies have been created to foster such behaviors. However, existing design interventions often assume that any kind act will positively impact well-being, neglecting factors that determine whether acts will actually enhance actor and recipient well-being. To address this gap, we conducted an explorative investigation into everyday kindness dynamics. Through a diary study capturing 137 everyday acts of kindness, we identified 13 factors across three categories (context, characteristics, and outcomes) that influence actor and recipient wellbeing. We organized these insights into an exploratory framework and tested its application in a workshop with designers that explored the practical applications of these factors in intervention design. Our findings demonstrate that kindness impacts depend on complex interrelationships between factors such as timeliness and fit with individuals. These insights support designers in moving beyond encouraging random acts to orchestrating interventions that consider both actor and recipient experiences, creating more meaningful and impactful kindness interventions.

This study explores the ethical complexities of using introspective methods, particularly autoethnography, in design research. Drawing from relevant literature, we identify six significant ethical risks – psychological or emotional, physical, privacy, social, career and economic, and integrity risks – that may be experienced by the researcher, individuals represented in autoethnographic accounts, and the readership at different phases of autoethnographic research. These unique risks stem from the dual role of ‘researcher as subject’ and highlight the inadequacy of conventional ethical frameworks in addressing them. In response, we developed the Introspector’s Toolkit for Responsible Practice, a practical resource designed to guide researchers through a pre-study self-consent ritual and support continuous ethical reflection throughout their research. The toolkit integrates multidimensional ethics, meta-autoethnographies, and critical reflective practices to provide a theoretically sound yet practical, structured yet dynamic approach to managing the ethical complexities of autoethnography. While this toolkit represents a promising step towards more ethically responsible and reflective use of autoethnography in design research, it is intended as a foundational resource, open to iterative refinement based on researcher feedback and evolving ethical challenges.

This two-part article explores the concept of emotional connoisseurship—the art of appreciating lived emotional experiences in emotion-driven design (EDD). In Part 1, we aim to establish and position the concept within the current EDD theoretical landscape. We first review the concept of connoisseurship, its origins, development, and relevance to professional practices. Second, building upon the existing design literature, we scrutinize the relationships between design connoisseurship and design expertise. We then conceptualize emotional connoisseurship as an essential skill that designers aspiring to practice EDD must actively cultivate, along with learning EDD theories, methods, and tools. After that, we reflect on how previous EDD research outcomes (i.e., emotional granularity design tools) can support the development of a designer’s emotional connoisseurship, especially in a schema-oriented or top-down manner, and argue the need for a sensibility-oriented or bottom-up approach. Part 1 sets the stage for Part 2. Part 2 will detail our pedagogical initiative supporting the self-cultivation of emotional connoisseurship among novice designers through a sensibility-oriented approach.

Part 2 of this article introduces the Experience Design Introspection (XDI) workshop. This educational initiative aims to nurture designers’ emotional connoisseurship through a sensibility-oriented approach. We begin by discussing the philosophical underpinnings of XDI, which include non-dualism, pluralism, and long-termism. We then outline three operational principles that guided the development of the XDI and the techniques used to achieve them. To illustrate the practical application of the XDI workshop, we provide a comprehensive walkthrough of a two-and-a-half-hour trial version, which also served as a platform for reflection and iterative improvement. In the final sections, we present participants’ feedback and envision the evolution of the XDI from a time-bound workshop to a community-based learning model. This model aims to foster long-term engagement, personalized cultivation, authentic social learning, and a culture of introspection and sharing that extends beyond the lecture room and studio.

This article presents a comprehensive review of existing literature covering the topic of mood-focused design. It delves into how designers and design researchers currently address mood in the context of experience-driven design. Using a scoping review methodology, we identified and thematically analyzed sixty-six highly relevant articles. Our findings are categorized into four themes: (1) diverse features and impacts of mood that have been comprehended and explored in design; (2) mood-focused design innovations that support mood monitoring, expression, and regulation; (3) potential issues and considerations related to mood-focused design; and (4) methodological resources that support empathizing and ideation within a mood-focused design process. This scoping review advances our understanding of mood as a distinct facet of human experience in design and outlines the current state of mood-focused design as an emerging field. To facilitate progress in the field, we propose four avenues for further exploration, underscoring the need to expand mood-centric theoretical understanding, artifact creation, opinion sharing, and method development.

This paper introduces a five-day intensive course, conducted over five years from 2018 to 2022, aimed at teaching emotion-driven design (EDD) to graduate students with diverse disciplinary backgrounds at Beijing Normal University. EDD is the practice of designing products or services that are informed by user or consumer emotions and/or aim to elicit predetermined emotions. The course was designed to teach students about human emotions from a scientific perspective and to provide hands-on experience in creative processes. To structure the course, seven principles derived from emotion-related design knowledge were employed, which guided the development of learning activities and course materials. The paper also includes student evaluations and reflections on the strengths and weaknesses of the course design. It intends to serve as a resource for design educators who wish to teach the practical application of emotion psychology to students with limited prior expertise.

Human moods are diffuse, elusive, and often difficult to articulate, yet they hold immense potential for wellbeing-centric design because they play a significant role in shaping our everyday life experiences. A person’s mood influences their experiences with a designed system, and in turn, their interactions with the design also influence their mood for better or worse. To enable designers to better comprehend and communicate moods in their design processes, this paper reports a project that explored the possibilities of creating haptic objects as a medium for communicating subtle qualities of specific moods. The project focused on three commonly experienced moods - cheerfulness, grumpiness, and gloominess. We first identified a set of haptic features that represent experiential qualities of these moods. These features were then synthesised into three mood-expressing haptic objects, which were evaluated using a blind test. The results indicated that haptic objects can be purposefully created, and that haptic qualities hold promise to complement verbal and visual forms of mood communication.

Mind-wandering (MW) and fidgeting are both present as pervasive phenomena in everyday life and can positively impact ideation. Importantly, within the MW experience, MW can manifest in bodily behaviors such as physical fidgeting. Here, we use an extended mind framework to consider fidgeting as a case of extended MW, where (part of) a MW episode is mediated by a fidget object. We position extended MW, fidgeting, and cognition as interrelated processes. We present the design of an interactive haptic fidget object that aims to support introspective self-awareness in MW and aid in idea synthesis. We discuss the results of an exploratory user evaluation in which the fidget object was used by designers during a personally relevant work session combining research, synthesis, and creativity. We close this paper by discussing the initial findings of our research, the implications for extended MW, and additional propositions for future research directions.

This paper presents an eight-day design studio that teaches heuristic evaluation of games to third-year bachelor students at the School of Design, Southern University of Science and Technology. Through this course, students gain the first-hand experiences of developing heuristics for games through online survey and using them in idea generation and game evaluation. 13 students (working in groups of two or individually) developed 88 heuristics for 8 game genres by analyzing 349 quotes of game reviews collected from online. The heuristics were further developed into questionnaires and tested with invited 51 game players, followed up by post-interviews. The heuristics were also used as inspirational tools to help the students generate design ideas in an ideation exercise. Results of the students’ work indicate usefulness of the heuristics as evaluative and inspirational tools. In the discussion, we reflected on the challenges encountered by the students over the course and how dealing with these challenges could reveal further directions of teaching research methods in HCI studios.

Smart home systems not only serve users to fulfill pragmatic goals, but also ‘live with’ users. Despite the conceptual possibilities, it still remains unclear whether and what social roles current smart home systems are intended by the companies. In this paper, we report a retrospective study on 15 selected smart home systems (SHSs) on current market. We used content analysis to identify themes and categories of function, personality and social role of these SHSs, and also explore the connections among them. Four representative social roles were identified: instrument, lobby boy, assistant and family member. Four related personalities were found: competent, helpful, trustworthy, and caring. Results of this study revealed an overview of current social roles that smart home system plays as well as the personalities they exhibit.

Introspective (or first-person) methods are carving out their niche in experience design research. Relevant epistemological conversations in recent years have led experience design researchers to appreciate the value of “researcher as subject” in understanding nuanced, rich, felt human experiences mediated by designs. However, there is still a clear need for more detailed guidance on how to employ introspective methods for experience design research. This existing gap in practical application often leads to inconsistent or inconsiderate use, especially among design researchers new to these methods. To address this, this paper explores various ways design researchers can collect introspective data. We conducted a systematic review of 118 articles, each employing or developing introspective methods in some form, published by reputable design research venues from 2012 to 2022. Our analysis offers a comprehensive and organized overview of six categories of introspective data collection techniques and the supportive tools for each. Additionally, we reflect on the current use of introspective methods in experience design research and propose five recommendations for future methodological development. We aspire for this paper to serve as a timely, go-to guide for introspective design researchers, and to promote a more refined and thoughtful application of introspective methods in our field.

Classical theories of harmony have been used to explain phenomena like beauty, happiness, health, virtue, pleasure, peace, and even ecological sustainability. With the intent of making these theories more accessible to designers, this article reviews the conception of harmony from about 500 BCE to the present. It begins with a brief overview of harmony in classical Chinese and Greek philosophy. Then it examines the role of harmony in the renaissance, the scientific revolution, and the early modern period across topics in aesthetics, ethics, physics, politics, and economics. Finally, turning to the 20th century, this article highlights the conceptual function of harmony in psychology, neuroscience, computer science, and design. This synthesis concludes with a review of applications and implications for contemporary designers. An essential conclusion of this article is that harmony involves the integration of diversity into a greater whole; harmony is not pure agreement or “sameness.” Overall, we suggest that classical principles of harmony might serve as a theoretical framework to help designers develop a more sustainable and vibrant vision of the future.

This paper presents a five-day intense course that teaches “emotion-driven design” (EDD) to graduate students with a broad variety of disciplinary backgrounds at the Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University. We introduce seven principles drawn from design-relevant emotion knowledge that informed the design of the course’s overall structure, and explain how they guided the development of learning activities and materials. We envision that this paper will interest design educators who aspire teaching how to operationalize emotions in creative design processes to students with little preexisting expertise in (or scientific knowledge about) emotion psychology.

This manuscript describes the development of a collection of 80 mood‐expressive images to be included in a mood inspiration booklet. Four images were selected for each of 20 different mood states. Two main criteria guided the selection procedure: (1) each image clearly represents and illustrates the target mood, and (2) the images within a set of four do not overlap (i.e., each image should add explanatory power to the set), and the set shows diversity (i.e., expressions, behaviours, social interactions and environments). First, a broad collection of 200 images was selected from online image databases. A questionnaire study (N = 66) examined the degree to which each of the 200 images expresses/illustrates the target mood. The study indicated that 158 images were good representations of the mood target (i.e., they rated significantly higher than the scale midpoint). The final collection of 80 moods were selected from these representative images.

This paper introduces a holistic typology of 20 mood states that are presented with a componential approach, describing six aspects: subjective feeling, perception, reaction, tendency, liking, and disliking. In addition, each mood is illustrated with a short example narrative and a collection of four images. The typology was generated by combining the results of two studies. With a lexical analysis and researcher introspections, Study 1 examined 135 mood words, which resulted in an initial identification of mood states and corresponding verbal and pictorial descriptions. Study 2 validated and enriched these results with a phenomenological analysis of 159 introspective mood samples that were collected by a group of nine co-researchers in a two-week mood diary exercise. The mood typology provides a fine-grained overview and a vocabulary of user moods. Designers and design researchers can use these results as a foundation for systematic mood-focused design research, as a means to develop mood sensibility and granularity (i.e., the ability to distinguish between moods and the variety of mood manifestations), and as a tool to facilitate user interviews in empathy-based design processes.