Affecting HCI: a new approach to affective computing through an emotional saliency model

The prospect of computers or machines understanding the emotional state of a user is one that has been around for nearly half a century. Even so, it was only 1995 when Picard coined the term 'Affective Computing' [1] and a research field was born. A community now exists where researchers work towards understanding the concept of emotion and how computers can collect and understand the emotional state of its users. Even though techniques and technologies have advanced to a level where the goal is possible, a lack of common direction and too much focus on success measures within the community is preventing the goal from being realised. The purpose of this poster is to present a new approach to affective computing based on community collaboration and the use of methods that are successful within other more successful fields.