Designing Emotionally Sound Instruction: The FEASP-Approach.
Astleitner, H. (2000)
It is unfortunate that we do have such dichotomy between cognition, motivation and emotion for it appears to provide a false sense of 'distinctiveness' of the constructs, which in reality might be an extension of one another.
Emotion might well be understood as an attentional mechanism influencing our cognitive processes by modulating valence (incentive) and expectancy (probability of success), components that make up (surprise, surprise!) the motivational theory!
"the questions of what should be learned to develop certain student's feelings"
It is assumed that we could develop emotional development, implying purposeful manipulation of emotion independently. What might have been overlooked is the fact that emotional reaction is built on cognitive processing of information (situational & personal) whether it be conscious or unconscious. For sake of research, such distinction of cognition and emotion might be necessary, but this should not fool us into thinking that they are distinct constructs acting independently. Emotion could be approached in the most cognitive manner whereby conscious cognitive procesing results in an emotional 'reaction' to the situation (or behavior) whereby influencing our future emotional, motivational, cognitive reaction to similar situation.
The author has made good integration of theoretical understanding from different fields based on empirical data. It is also interesting how he came up with certain principles applicable for practice. Only if he didn't dedicate so much space to meditation....hmm....
Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction
Sharp, H. (2007) chapter 5
topic of error messages: don't know where to begin
from the user's perspective, i do want to see more informative error messages,
from a developer's perspective, i consider different kind of error messages.
the concept of error handling is crucial from a programmer's perspective and time and thought is alway put & dedicated to error handling. However, from the interaction design perspective, what with burden of endless deadlines, time is never really dedicated to design user-friendly error messages. Thus, users are left with geeky error messages that they can't quite decode. Who's fault is it?
Interaction:
The word interaction is misguiding us in some ways when it comes to interaction with machines. The word puts in our mind the concept of social interaction. We expect to receive the same kind of response that we get in social interaction with another human being. However, we do not treat machines the way we would treat another human being in a social interaction. Perhaps it's the greed but how could we address this rather paradoxical relationship? Would emotion expression be an answer?
The author brings up the topic of anthromorphism in a similar sense. But if we already possess the tendency to treat our machines as humans, do we need to try an fake the 'humanness'?
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Emotional Design
Norman, D. (2004) chapters 1–4
Interestingly, after a while, most cognitivists come to realize that their intended exclusion of 'emotion' in their study of human mind & behavior can go only so far.
Norman's model of visceral, behavioral & reflective levels of emotion is interesting, although rather perplexing. There seems to be a sense of hierarchy in these systems, which probably are more like an interative loop where each level is constantly informing the others.
Norman, however, appears to maintain a clear distinction between function and emotional value of design. Perhaps the distinction is useful for the purpose of isolating factors influencing human behavior (as a response to tool in use) for reaserch but in design practice, I wonder if we could make such distinction, or even if it is needed.
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The Effect of Positive Emotions on Multimedia Learning
Um, E., Song, H., & Plass, J.L. (2007)
Very interesting how the postive emotional design has improved the satisfaction and showed influence on learning. The only caveat is that the article did not extrapolate on the actual principle applied to make such positive emotional design. (well, only because I do know that they did use specific principles!) For the instructional designer, pointing out to what design principles were applied in the design of the instructional material (i.e. baby face effect) might be very helpful.
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Overall...
the readings definitely reflect the initial attempts at addressing the issues related to emotion in design. Donald Norman attempts to address the levels of emotion as response (as a result of) using a tool. However, with further sophistication of emotion research in instructional design, differential involvement of emotion (as distinct processes) in educational environment needs to be identified. Emotion is a very broad term just as cognition. While cognitive processes are studied with added specificity, i.e. long term, short term memory, attention, perception etc., emotion is dealt in a fairly generalized manner. Emotion is definitely involved as a response to interaction of the design, but purported use of emotion can also be made to influence certain cognitive and behavioral response. (emotion as a factor of motivation, usability, attitude, behavior and cognition etc.) The reason why we see the focus on emotion as reaction to tool use might be due to current research focusing on the issue of usability.
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