This state of the art monograph presents a unique introduction to thinking about cuteness and its incorporation into modern, especially computer-based, products and services. Cuteness is defined and explored in relation to user-centered design concepts and methods, in addition to considering the history of cuteness and cuteness in other cultures, especially in relation to eastern Asia. The authors provide detailed analyses and histories of cuteness in Japan and in China, the rise of Kawaii and Moe cultural artifacts, and their relation to social, psychological, and design issues. They also attempt an initial taxonomy of cuteness. Finally, detailed interviews with leading designers of cute products and services, such as Hello Kitty, provide an understanding of the philosophy and decision-making process of designers of cuteness. Cuteness Engineering: Designing Adorable Products and Services will be of interest and use to a wide range of professionals, researchers, academics, and students who are interested in exploring the world of cuteness in fresh new ways and gaining insights useful for their work and studies.

This book provides practical guidance and awareness for a growing body of knowledge developing across a variety of disciplines. This initiative is a celebration of the Gavriel Salvendy International Symposium (GSIS) and provides a survey of topics and emerging areas of interest in human–automation interaction. This set of articles for the GSIS emphasizes a main thematic areas: mobile computing. Main areas of coverage include Section A: Health, Care and Assistive Technologies; Section B: Usability, User Experience and Design; Section C: Virtual Learning, Training and Collaboration; Section D: Ergonomics in Work, Automation and Production. In total, there are more than 600 pages emphasizing contributions from especially early career researchers that were featured as part of this (virtual) symposium and celebration. Gavriel Salvendy initiated the conferences that run annually as Human–Computer Interaction within LNCS of Springer and Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics International (AHFE). The book is inclusive of human–computer interaction and human factors and ergonomics principles, yet is intended to serve a much wider audience that has interest in automation and human modeling. The emerging need for human–automation interaction expertise has developed from an ever-growing availability and presence of automation in our everyday lives. This initiative is intended to provide practical guidance and awareness for a growing body of knowledge developing across a variety of disciplines and many countries.

“Kawaii” is a Japanese word that denotes “cute,” “lovable,” or “charming” although it does not have exactly the same meaning as those adjectives. This book proposes engineering methodologies for systematic measurement of the affective perception of kawaii, by using virtual reality and biological signals, and discusses the effectiveness of kawaii engineering for designing industrial products and services. Kawaii can draw sympathy from people and can embody a special kind of cute design, which reduces fear and makes dull information more acceptable and appealing. Following the introduction of the background of kawaii engineering in Chapter 1, Chapters 2 and 3 describe experiments on the systematic measurement and evaluation methods for kawaii products and affective evaluation experiments. Chapter 4 proposes a mathematical model to identify the physical attributes that determine kawaii in motion. Chapters 5 and 6 explain research that uses biological signals and eye-tracking. After a brief survey of psychological research on kawaii and cuteness in Chapter 7, Chapters 8 and 9 introduce the use of spoons designed to stimulate the appetite of the elderly and the practical implementation of an emotion-driven camera. Chapters 10–14 explain experimental research that examines kawaii perception of people from various cultural backgrounds. Kawaii Engineering will appeal to those who work on affective computing, product design, user experience design, virtual reality, and biological signals.

An impassioned philosophical celebration of the multiple dimensions of contemporary cuteness. Involuntarily sucked into the forcefield of Cute, Amy Ireland and Maya B. Kronic decided to let go, give in, let the demon ride them, and make an accelerationism out of it—only to realize that Cute opens a microcosmic gate onto the transcendental process of acceleration itself. Joining the swarming e-girls, t-girls, NEETS, anons, and otaku who rescued accelerationism from the double pincers of media panic and academic buzzkill by introducing it to big eyes, fluffy ears, programming socks, and silly memes, they discover that the objects of cute culture are just spinoffs of an accelerative process booping us from the future, rendering us all submissive, breedable, helpless, and cute in our turn. Cute comes tomorrow, and only anastrophe can make sense of what it will have been doing to us. Evading all discipline, sliding across all possible surfaces, Cute Accelerationism embraces every detail of the symptomatology, aetiology, epidemiology, history, biology, etymology, topology, and even embryology of Cute, joyfully burrowing down into its natural, cultural, sensory, sexual, subjective, erotic, and semiotic dimensions in order to sound out the latent spaces of this Thing that has soft-soaped its way into human culture. Traversing tangents on natural and unnatural selection, runaway supernormalisation, the collective self-transformation of genderswarming cuties, the hyperstitional cultures of shojo and otaku, denpa and 2D love, and the cute subworlds of aegyo and meng, moé and flatmaxxing, catboys and dogon eggs, bobbles and gummies, vore machines and partial objects, BwOs and UwUs…glomping, snuggling, smooshing and squeeeeing their way toward the event horizon of Cute, donning cat ears and popping bubbles as they go, in this untimely philosophical intensification of an omnipresent phenomenon, having surrendered to the squishiest demonic possession, like, ever, two bffs set out in search of the transcendental shape of cuteness only to realize that, even though it is all around us, we do not yet know what Cute can do. Seriously superficial and bafflingly coherent, half erudite philosophical treatise, half dariacore mashup, 100 percent cutagion, this compact lil’ textual machine is a meltdown and a glow up, as well as a twizzled homage to Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus. Welcome to the kawaiizome: nothing uncute makes it out of the near future, and the cute will very soon no longer be even remotely human.

The three-volume set LNCS 9746, 9747, and 9748 constitutes the proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Design, User Experience, and Usability, DUXU 2016, held as part of the 18th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2016, in Toronto, Canada, in July 2016, jointly with 13 other thematically similar conferences. The total of 1287 papers presented at the HCII 2016 conferences were carefully reviewed and selected from 4354 submissions. These papers address the latest research and development efforts and highlight the human aspects of design and use of computing systems. The papers accepted for presentation thoroughly cover the entire field of Human-Computer Interaction, addressing major advances in knowledge and effective use of computers in a variety of application areas. The total of 157 contributions included in the DUXU proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in this three-volume set. The 67 papers included in this volume are organized in topical sections on emotion, motivation, and persuasion design; DUXU in learning and education; games and gamification; culture, language and DUXU; DUXU for social innovation and sustainability; usability and user experience studies.

The 3 volume-set LNCS 11566, 11567 + 11568 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Human Computer Interaction thematic area of the 21st International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2019, which took place in Orlando, Florida, USA, in July 2019. A total of 1274 papers and 209 posters have been accepted for publication in the HCII 2019 proceedings from a total of 5029 submissions. The 125 papers included in this HCI 2019 proceedings were organized in topical sections as follows: Part I: design and evaluation methods and tools; redefining the human in HCI; emotional design, Kansei and aesthetics in HCI; and narrative, storytelling, discourse and dialogue. Part II: mobile interaction; facial expressions and emotions recognition; eye-gaze, gesture and motion-based interaction; and interaction in virtual and augmented reality. Part III: design for social challenges; design for culture and entertainment; design for intelligent urban environments; and design and evaluation case studies.

Understanding emotions is becoming ever more valuable in design, both in terms of what people prefer as well as in relation to how they behave in relation to it. Approaches to conceptualising emotions in technology design, how emotions can be operationalised and how they can be measured are paramount to ascertaining the core principles of design. Emotions in Technology Design: From Experience to Ethics provides a multi-dimensional approach to studying, designing and comprehending emotions in design. It presents emotions as understood through basic human-technology research, applied design practice, culture and aesthetics, ethical approaches to emotional design, and ethics as a cultural framework for emotions in design experience. Core elements running through the book are: cognitive science – cognitive-affective theories of emotions (i.e., Appraisal); culture – the ways in which our minds are trained to recognise, respond to and influence design; and ethics – a deep cultural framework of interpretations of good versus evil. This ethical understanding brings culture and cognition together to form genuine emotional experience. This book is essential reading for designers, technology developers, HCI and cognitive science scholars, educators and students (at both undergraduate and graduate levels) in terms of emotional design methods and tools, systematic measurement of emotion in design experience, cultural theory underpinning how emotions operate in the production and interaction of design, and how ethics influence basic (primal) and higher level emotional reactions. The broader scope equips design practitioners, developers and scholars with that ‘something more’ in terms of understanding how emotional experience of technology can be positioned in relation to cultural discourse and ethics.