Emotional line: Showing emotions through the sharpness, height, width and speed of a series of concatenated digital shifting curves

Abstract

This paper proposes and explores an abstract approach to express emotions. Emotions are represented in terms of valence and arousal dimensions and they are visually expressed through the shape and speed of a series of concatenated digital shifting curves that together compose a curved line that resembles a non-periodic wave. In particular, the valence value is expressed through the sharpness of the curves (the more negative the valence, the sharper the curves), while the arousal value is expressed through their height, width and speed (the greater the arousal, the higher, thinner and quicker the curves). Furthermore, the paper describes a user experiment which investigated whether the valence and arousal expressed by our model are appropriately perceived by the users or not. The results suggest that combinations of sharpness, height, width and speed are perceived correctly as particular emotions; that sharpness is perceived as valence; that height, width and speed are jointly perceived as arousal; and that the perceptions of both valence and arousal are independent of each other. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.