Motion, Emotion, and Form: Exploring Affective Dimensions of Shape

In this paper, we present a study examining how individuals embody emotion within form. Our findings provide a general taxonomy of affective dimensions of shape consistent with and extending previous literature. We also show that ordinary people can reasonably construct embodied shapes using affective dimensions, and illustrate that emotion is conveyed through both visual dimensions and tactile manipulations of shape. Participants used three distinct strategies for embodiment of emotion through shape: the look of a shape (visual representation), creation of a shape symbolizing the experience of an intended emotion (metaphor), and by evoking the intended emotion in the creator through affective movements and manipulations during construction (motion). This work ties together and extends understanding around emotion and form in HCI subdomains such as tangible embodied interaction, emotional assessment, and user experience evaluation.