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Culture Matters: A Study on Presence in an Interactive Movie

Abstract – A cross cultural study was conducted to test the influences of different cultural backgrounds on the user’s presence experience in interacting with a distributed interactive movie. The effects of embodied interaction on presence were also investigated because embodiment is often used to enrich the experience and to reduce the complexity of distributed interaction. In absence of a clear definition of what cultural factors might influence presence, Dutch and Chinese participants were invited to the study to optimize cultural diversion. The results suggested that Chinese participants perceived more presence than Dutch participants in all conditions. The results also show that interaction methods (direct touch against remote control) had no influence, while embodiment (robot against screen agent) had mixed effects on presence.
Keywords: culture, interactive movie, presence

J. Hu, and C. Bartneck, “Culture Matters – a Study on Presence in an Interactive Movie,” CyberPsychology and Behavior, vol. 11, no. 5, pp. 529-535, 2008.
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DOI: 10.1089/cpb.2007.0093
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Designing for Experience: Arousing Boredom to Evoke Predefined User Behaviour

Joran van Aart, Ben Salem, Christoph Bartneck, Jun Hu, Matthias Rauterberg

Abstract – In the light of Cultural Computing, this study influences user affect and behaviour by touching upon core values of Western culture. We created an augmented reality environment in which users experience a predefined sequence of emotional states and events. This study concerns two typically Western drives: boredom and curiosity. We specifically address the arousal of boredom, a mental state characterized by a heightened drive for exploration, making it easier to guide people in their decision making. Based on psychology literature, we introduce general design guidelines for arousing boredom. We report on the design of the augmented reality environment, the experiment effectively arousing boredom and on the redesign of the environment based on the experimental results.

Keywords: User Affect, Emotions, Cultural Computing, Boredom, Diversive Exploration, Alice in Wonderland, User Behaviour, Modelling Experience, Design, Affective Computing

J. van Aart, B. Salem, C. Bartneck, J. Hu, and M. Rauterberg, “Designing for Experience: Arousing Boredom to Evoke Predefined User Behaviour,” in 6th Design and emotion conference, Hong Kong, 2008.
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