Users’ sense-making of an affective intervention in human-computer interaction

Abstract

This qualitative interview study builds on an empirical experiment in which an affective intervention was given to users in a critical dialog situation of human-computer interaction (HCI). The applied intervention addressed users on a personal level by asking for their thoughts and feelings. Since this is still an unusual behavior for a technical system, the aim of the present study was to investigate how users reason about this. Three different kinds of individual sensemaking processes regarding the intervention were worked out. These clarify that a personal level of interaction between system and user is only appropriate for some users, whereas it also can have adverse effects on others. By explicating users’ experiences and conceptions, this study contributes to research on affective interventions in HCI that in the past was mainly focused on measurements of effectiveness rather than on understanding users‘inner processes regarding such interventions.