Exploring principles for affectibility in the design of mobile applications

Abstract

The objective of the design principles for Affectibility is to help designers to reason about and consider affect in the design process. The principles were proposed thinking about the context of children's education. Previous studies suggest that the use of the principles results in software that children have rather positive responses when interacting with them. In this paper we explored the principles for Affectibility in a context outside children's education. The principles were introduced to a group of prospective designers (undergraduate students), who had to create mobile applications for the World Cup. Students elicited the main concepts (using participatory techniques) for the new applications; and then developed and evaluated each other's applications. The objective of this work is to evaluate the viability of the use of the principles outside educational contexts and to understand the use designers make of the principles.