Media: uiGarden is back with a Sense of Presence

uiGarden is back up after its hacking attack and the new issue features "Emotion and the sense of presence in HCI design" by John Waterworth.

Working with a European project, the team set up a virtual environment with different spaces themed by mood: 'Our tests have shown that it was possible to induce the different moods by the use of the virtual environment. The results also showed that different kinds of mood evoke different degrees of presence in the environment. Paradiso, which evoked a calm mood, created a low degree of presence, while Inferno, which evoked anxiety, induced a high degree of presence. The obvious interpretation is that different kinds of emotions induce different degrees of presence in a computermediated environment. This is important, because high presence requires and demands a high level of attention. Depending on the nature of the application, this may or may not be appropriate (for example, most mobile phone applications should not demand much attention, since the user is often engaged in other activities concurrently.'

This is the heart of the article, but Waterworth goes on to draw out a model of presence and discuss its implications. There are also pictures of the three mood environments.

Associated Link: uiGarden: Emotion and the sense of presence in HCI design

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