Emotion pervades human life in general, and human communication in
particular, and this sets information technology a challenge.
Traditionally, IT has focused on allowing people to accomplish practical
tasks efficiently, setting emotion to one side. That was acceptable when
technology was a small part of life, but as technology and life become
increasingly interwoven we can no longer ask people to suspend their
emotional nature and habits when they interact with technology.
The European Commission funded a series of related research projects on
emotion and computing, culminating in the HUMAINE project which brought
together leading academic researchers from the many related disciplines.
This book grew out of that project, and its chapters are arranged
according to its working areas: theories and models; signals to signs;
data and databases; emotion in interaction; emotion in cognition and
action; persuasion and communication; usability; and ethics and good
practice.
The fundamental aim of the book is to offer researchers an overview of
the related areas, sufficient for them to do credible work on affective
or emotion-oriented computing. The book serves as an academically sound
introduction to the range of disciplines involved - technical, empirical
and conceptual - and will be of value to researchers in the areas of
artificial intelligence, psychology, cognition and user-machine
interaction.
