Westling, Carina E I, Ackah, James K, Santos, Carlos P, Chockalingam, Nachiappan and Witchel, Harry J (2016) Experience design: video without faces increases engagement but not empathy. Published in: Proceedings of the European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics (ECCE 2016); The University of Nottingham, UK; 6-8 September 2016. a5. Association for Computing Machinery ISBN 9781450342445

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Abstract

Counter to prior claims that empathy is required for higher levels of engagement in human-computer interaction, our team has previously found that, in an analysis of 844 stimulus presentations, empathy is sufficient for high engagement, but is not necessary. Here, we ran a carefully controlled study of human-computer interactions with musical stimuli --- with and without visuals, and with and without recognizable people -- to directly test whether we could design an engaging stimulus that did not elicit empathy, by avoiding human faces or personal interaction. We measured subjective responses by visual analogue scale and found that the faceless stimulus was as engaging as the face-containing stimulus, but much less empathy-provoking. Therefore, we propose that empathy and engagement be considered independently during interaction design, because they are not monotonically related.

Item Type:	Conference Proceedings
Schools and Departments:	Brighton and Sussex Medical School > Neuroscience School of Media, Film and Music > Media and Film
Depositing User:	Harry Witchel
Date Deposited:	09 Mar 2017 14:28
Last Modified:	27 Jul 2017 17:21
URI:	http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/67030

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