Emotions and Feelings: Some Aspects for the HCI-Community–A Work in Progress Paper.

Everyone has experienced emotions and everybody knows what they are – at least, we think we know. Asked for an explanation, the response will likely be something along the lines of “happiness is an emotion” or “if I’m scared of something, it is also an emotion.” Such imprecise and in the narrower sense incorrect definitions are entirely sufficient for everyday use. But this is obviously not the case in science as well as in corporate practice. After all, important recommendations for the economy should be derived from well-founded studies. As a first step, this requires that the term “emotions” means the same to everybody. At the present time, this is wishful thinking. A steadily rising number of publications are produced within the HCI community, in which in part elaborate measuring techniques are used to account for emotions with different study designs. However, this approach appears to be problematic, because a standard definition of “emotions” has yet to be established. The purpose of this publication is to draw the attention of the HCI community to this issue and to start a worthwhile conversation with an attempt at providing a definition. It concludes with a specific recommendation as to which physiological measuring methods would be conducive for answering corporate research questions.