How are you, my digital friend?

Semiogenesis of a Visual Communication Concept for Emotional contents of Future HCI in Smart Living Contexts 

The PhD project focuses on the visual semiotic geneses of synthetic emotions in HCI. The realization of the project is structured like a design-thinking process with a shift from a human-centered to a things-centered framework.

Emotions are part of the human experience and play a significant role in our life, an even more extensive than the rational one. The emotional repertoire of a thing and the definition of emotional triggers/appeals involves inscribing cultural values and socio-political aspects. What sorts of emotions/moods are relevant for interaction in the coexistence of humans and machines?

Imagine it’s 2040, and you are living together in a collaborative network of diverse digital entities. The project „How are you, my digital friend?” investigates the possibilities of inscribing the „vibrant matter“ (Bennet, 2020) of „emotions“ (Damasio, 2011) in a socio-technical interface in HCI.

Living and working in coexistence with digital actants means that we begin an intimate relationship with them. In this fiction, digital actants can show us their emotion and react emotionally to a particular situation.

Konzept, Idea, Design: Marianne Lechner
Developement: Marianne Lechner, Katharina Mayrhofer