Affecting User Behaviour and Experience with Music : A Research Agenda

Research into auditory interaction within a human-computer interaction (HCI) context has focused predominantly on using sounds to communicate information to users in the form of short, auditory messages. We propose that music could be included in interactive technologies with the objective of affecting users’ behaviour and their experiences, rather than simply to communicate information. This paper aims to explain how and why music can affect user behaviour and experience by considering how other fields exploit the affective properties of music. A research agenda is proposed that poses questions for investigation in relation to exploiting the affective qualities of music in interactive technologies. An initial empirical study has been undertaken to investigate how a musical email client affect users’ felt emotions. This study yielded some interesting results that are presented here, with a discussion about why these results may have occurred.

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