Challenges of Designing HCI for Negative Emotions

TL;DR

This paper explores the challenges and opportunities in designing human-computer interaction systems that support negative emotions, emphasizing the importance of balancing emotional support with harm prevention in social and personal technologies.

Contribution

It highlights the lack of focus on negative emotions in HCI and discusses the delicate balance needed to design systems that support these emotions without causing harm.

Findings

Negative emotions can be beneficial when supported properly.

Designing for negative affect involves ethical and practical challenges.

There is a need for guidelines to prevent harm in emotional HCI design.

Abstract

Emotions that are perceived as "negative" are inherent in the human experience. Yet not much work in the field of HCI has looked into the role of these emotions in interaction with technology. As technology is becoming more social, personal and emotional by mediating our relationships and generating new social entities (such as conversational agents and robots), it is valuable to consider how it can support people's negative emotions and behaviors. Research in Psychology shows that interacting with negative emotions correctly can benefit well-being, yet the boundary between helpful and harmful is delicate. This workshop paper looks at the opportunities of designing for negative affect, and the challenge of "causing no harm" that arises in an attempt to do so.