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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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