Augmenting Media with Thermal Stimulation

Thermal interfaces are a new area of research in HCI, with one of their main benefits being the potential to influence emotion. To date, studies investigating thermal feedback for affective interaction have either provided concepts and prototypes, or looked at the affective element of thermal stimuli in isolation. This research is the first to look in-depth at how thermal stimuli can be used to influence the perception of different media. We conducted two studies which looked at the effect of thermal stimuli on subjective emotional responses to media. In the first we presented visual information designed to evoke emotional responses in conjunction with different thermal stimuli. In the second we used different methods to present thermal stimuli in conjunction with music. Our results highlight the possibility of using thermal stimuli to create more affective interactions in a variety of media interaction scenarios.