Emotion Enhancement through Ubiquitous Media Technology in a Smart Kitchen Environment

Today, Human Computer Interaction is increasingly shifting from 'information worlds' towards 'experience worlds'. Still, much research of smart environment technologies focuses merely on functional aspects. This paper recognizes the relevance of smart environment technologies on emotional experiences. We developed a ubiquitous media technology in a smart kitchen environment to enhance the user's emotions: A touch and voice controlled Visual Atmosphere App (VAA) that can change kitchen ambience through different atmospheric themes by using visual projection on the kitchen surfaces and sound effects. In a quantitative and qualitative laboratory user study (N=30) we measured the impact of the VAA on the user's emotional state. Our findings show that this ubiquitous media technology in a smart environment can have a significant (p<0.05) effect on emotion enhancement. This result is even stronger if the smart environment fits the user's personal preferences. This study is a step towards emotional experiences caused by smart environment technologies to foster desired psychological states.