Emotions and Multimodal Interface-Agents: A Sociological View

Designing human-computer interfaces that are easy and intuitive to use is important for the use of computer technology in general. Due to the growing complexity of information systems, more and more elaborated concepts of interface design can be found. One of the most advanced concepts is agent technology. Within this conceptional approach emotional agents are of increasing importance because emotions have a strong influence on interactions. At the same time communication channels between humans and computers become more powerful. This can be seen in an intensified research in multimodal interfaces. Applying the concept of agents to multimodal interface design allows to combine the advantages of both approaches. Until now, this combination mostly relies on cognitive psychological approaches to emotion, although emotions are also a fundamentally social process. This is why sociology has to offer interesting perspectives. Within the DFG-research project “Sozionik”, sociological theory is used to enhance computational systems, in this case hybrid societies. We will show in which way sociological theories of emotion can be used to design emotional agents. This is also of importance regarding the use of multimodality since the emotional consequences of applied modalities are subject to social norms and rules. Consequently we call for a sociologically founded user model and a model of an agent’s “social self”.