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

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Book cover Affect and Emotion in Human-Computer Interaction

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 4868))

Abstract

This paper describes an user experience study of a particular ‘affective widget’ - called a ‘moodie’. This onscreen device helps to paint an emotional picture of the day of a contact centre employee. These users undertake work that can be classified as ‘emotional labour’ [10] - in other words they may have to express emotions whilst on a customer telephone call that they may not necessarily feel, both about the customer and the technology that they are using to mediate the conversation. This often leads to user stress, a poor customer experience and high staff churn. Moodies were designed as part of a prototype interface called a Motivational User Interface (MUI). They were created as a way of expressing and self reporting the emotional responses that users feel throughout the day. These prototype affective widgets were then evaluated by contact centre employees and their managers.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. British Telecommunications PLC, Adastral Park, Martlesham Heath, Ipswich, UK

    Nicola Millard

  2. Bournemouth University, Wallisdown, Bournemouth, UK

    Linda Hole

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  1. Nicola Millard
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  2. Linda Hole
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Christian Peter Russell Beale

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Millard, N., Hole, L. (2008). In the Moodie: Using ‘Affective Widgets’ to Help Contact Centre Advisors Fight Stress. In: Peter, C., Beale, R. (eds) Affect and Emotion in Human-Computer Interaction. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4868. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-85099-1_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-85099-1_16

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-85098-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-85099-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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