Emotional Intelligence: Constructing User Stereotypes for Affective Bi-modal Interaction

The need of incorporating stereotypes concerning users' emotional characteristics in affective multi-modal user interfaces is important. To this end we present user stereotypes that we have constructed concerning the emotional behavior of users while they interact with computers. The construction of these user stereotypes have been based on an empirical study. The empirical study has been conducted among different kinds of computer users in terms of how they express emotions while they interact with a through a keyboard and a microphone in a bi-modal kind of interaction. The stereotypes have been incorporated in a user modeling component underlying an affective bi-modal user interface that uses a microphone and a keyboard. Actions of the users in terms of what they said and/or what they typed computer in the context of typical interaction situations are interpreted in terms of their feelings so that appropriate affective messages may be generated.