Project title:Interactive thermal interfaces
Thermal stimulation in human-computer interaction (HCI) is a feedback channel that has been demonstrated to have the ability to evoke emotions in people when presented on its own and also has the potential to influence emotions when used to augment images. HCI research on thermal stimulation has mainly focused on its use as a feedback channel, while its affective attributes remains an under-researched area. Previous work has shown that thermal stimuli might have an effect on the emotional perception of images, however very little is understood about the exact emotional responses different thermal properties can elicit towards images and the external factors that influences the kind of affect thermal stimuli has. To address this gap, my PhD investigates the factors that influence the emotion thermal stimuli can evoke in images, including thermal stimuli parameters and external factors, for example, presentation technique, image display size and device used to display images. After identifying the role of individual thermal stimuli parameters in influencing affect in images, the research goes ahead to investigate the potential of applying the findings obtained in influencing emotions in social media images. This research provides the first in-depth investigation of the effect of individual thermal stimuli parameters in influencing affect in images with varying emotional properties and the external factors that contribute to the amount of affective influence thermal stimulation has on images.