Affect-Aware Reflective Writing Studios

Abstract

Writing involves complex affective and cognitive processes highly influenced by the environments where we write, and these environments are undergoing critical change. Writing in the 21st century is typically performed using digital devices connected to the Internet, enabling writers to interact with content and with other people in completely new ways. This increased interconnectedness opens the door to new opportunities as well as challenges. This paper proposes a new type of tool, Reflective Writing Studios, that can be used to study writing phenomena in a most encompassing way, taking into account the writer’s physical and social surroundings and their emotions and mental states in addition to the cognitive processes generally studied. The paper introduces the architecture for the affect-aware multimodal interaction system, its components and their evaluation. Two types of data are used: structured information about the activity and multimodal sensor data from the writer and the environment. Data fusion and user interaction (e.g. visualizations) are developed using affective computing techniques. We discuss how RWS can support novice writers to reflect on the context, process, and outcomes, which are aspects acknowledged as key for developing writing skills. The framework opens avenues for research in terms of multimodal data collection and interpretation.