In the Moodie: Using 'Affective Widgets' to Help Contact Centre Advisors Fight Stress

Designed as part of an innovative prototype interface to be used by contact centre advisors (Millard et al, 1997, 1999; Hole et al, 1998), the ‘moodie’ was created as a reaction to a difficult customer where advisors are experiencing moments of emotional dissonance (Wharton, 1993; Abraham, 1998; Hochschild, 1983; Morris and Feldman, 1996) after completion of a call. After initial discussions, the design team and the advisors settled on expressing frustration by using the mouse to physically throw the call (represented by a spherical customer capsule) into the on screen waste bin. This action released a ‘moodie’, an animated stick figure that struts up and down the screen apparently exuding frustration (see Figure 1) and personality (Reeves and Nass, 1996).