Expressing mixed emotions via gradient color: An interactive online chat interface design based on affective recognition

Abstract

This paper presents an online chat interface design which can display users’ mixed emotions during online chatting in the form of gradient color. This design is based on affective recognition and tries to provide an effective way of emotional communication. The system of this design consists of two parts: emotional recognition and emotional display. The affective recognition function relies on the Microsoft cognitive service, which provides APIs (Application Programming Interface) to make the function quick and accurate. Mixed emotions are shown by gradient color and an emotion indicator has been added to create an emotional chatting environment. A preliminary test has been done among 8 couples or lovers to evaluate the design and the results show that this online chat interface design, which aims to help mixed emotional communication, can be useable for lovers chatting. The study provides opportunities for further improvement and exploration of this approach and applications to more fields.