Exploring Emotions through Painting, Photography and Expressive Writing: an Early Experimental User Study

This paper presents a working prototype of PaintMyEmotions, an interactive self-reflection instrument that allows individuals to assess, express and monitor their affective states in a fun and engaging way. Despite the ever-increasing popularity of eHealth technologies, online interventions and research studies often present severe problems of attrition (low adherence to the program and/or high drop-out rates). To increase the chances for success of our project and subsequent research, we decided to test early and often, involving users from the beginning, in an iterative design cycle. In this article, we describe the process and the results of an early exploratory user study, where we analyzed the performance and usability of a working prototype, studied its potential, and explored aspects like engagement and joy of use.