Embodying Alternate Attitudes: Design Opportunities for Physical Interfaces in Persuasive Gaming Experiences

The ability to view issues through alternate attitudes is an increasingly valuable skill. Persuasive games provide users an opportunity to practice adopting alternate attitudes, but users' pre-existing attitudes can get in the way. Multi-player games can use collaboration to help users overcome their pre-existing attitudes, but techniques for single-player games are lacking. In this paper we suggest that physical interface features (e.g., temperature) could be used to prime alternate attitudes in users. Embodied metaphor theory provides a framework for relating physical characteristics of an interface to more abstract concepts like emotions and beliefs. To empirically validate our design concept, we instantiate it in Thermouse: a temperature-controlled mouse that serves as a research instrument to assess whether interface temperature can help users explore alternate attitudes towards divisive humanitarian issues.