Humor engineering in smart environments

Abstract

Enjoyment is one of the positive emotions we expect to have when visiting environments that have been designed to provide us with entertainment experiences. However, enjoyment is also part of our daily life, whether we are at home, in our office environment, in public environments, or on the move from one environment to the other. Humor is important in our daily experiences. We ourselves and our daily conversational partners are expected to have a sense of humor. We cannot maintain friendly relationships with family members, friends, and colleagues without having this sense of humor. Humor is one of the most appreciated traits in human-human interaction. In this chapter, we investigate the possible role of humor in smart environments or, from an opposite perspective, how smart digital technology, its sensors, and actuators can help to introduce humorous situations and interactions in digitally enhanced physical worlds. With these words in mind, we discuss accidental, spontaneous, scripted, and staged humor. We will also draw upon humor as it appears nowadays in artificial physical environments, such as video game environments. Conclusions will be drawn about being able to include humorous interactions and about being able to participate in humorous activities in smart technology-supported environments and events.