One of the simplest and most commonly-used tools for measuring the affective dimension of user experience is the verbal self-response survey. Unfortunately, these tools aren’t always effective because users sometimes unintentionally repress or don’t recognize their own emotions. By contrast, non-verbal tools use the concept of “affect-tagging” to capture a more intuitive, instinctive emotional response from the user about their immediate emotional state. By presenting users with animated, multimedia emotional characters instead of words, affect-tagging has proven to be better at detecting low intensity emotions, particularly those most common in an HCI context.

To assess the validity of affect-tagging as a new method for measuring user experience, Mary Frances Jones from the Georgia Tech University and the Affective Technology Research Group conducted a survey to compare verbal self-response surveys vs. non-verbal self-response surveys. Based on a review of the literature, the hypothesis was that affect-tagging could capture more clear and meaningful data, and ultimately richer insights into the user’s overall experience with an interface.

At the time of this report, some participants are still completing the survey. However, early analysis of the data suggests that, compared with traditional verbal surveys, affect-tagging shows promise for detecting the presence of negative, low intensity emotions which users are notoriously less likely to self-report in verbal surveys. This could be promising as a means of measuring user emotion with more reliability, especially when combined with other non-verbal, physiological measurement techniques such as eye tracking, facial scanning and galvanic skin sensing.

The E-Learn–World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, & Higher Education is an international conference organized by the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) and co-sponsored by the International Journal on E-Learning.

The last edition was organized in Vancouver (Canada) and brought experts in these fields from around the world. The use of web 2.0 tools in learning scenarios, open resources and evaluation were among the main themes of the sessions.

Our team presented a paper where we showed the first steps that the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya is following in its effort to introduce the affective dimension in the core of the e-learning design process. We believe that our first stages could be useful for other institutions interested to include the affective dimension within the design of their online environment. We have concluded that three steps should be the starting point: a specific methodology to gather affective information, a set of general affective principles to guide designers’ tasks and “testing & playing” with new tools and methodologies already available in the market.

Please find the paper by clicking here

The Joy of Learning team has been developing a project aimed  to evaluate the overall satisfaction and the affective responses of our students when performing tasks in a virtual learning environment.
We have triangulated three complementary affect assessment methods: facial expression interpretations, pupil scanning and students as self-evaluators (participant self-assessment).

At the moment we can offer some results and conclusions that may be useful for other institutions in their attempts to assess learning tools from an affective point of view.

Download the poster of the study

Dowload a conference paper of the study