Measuring emotion

Development and application of an instrument to measure emotional responses to products.

Emotions enrich virtually all our waking moments with either a pleasant or unpleasant quality. So far, little is known about how people respond emotionally to products and what aspects of design or interaction trigger emotional responses. In order to support the study of these responses, a measurement instrument was developed that is capable to measure combinations of simultaneously experienced emotions: the Product Emotion Measurement Instrument (PrEmo). This article discusses the development of PrEmo in the context of existing instruments. In addition, an illustrative cross-culture study is reported, in which emotions evoked by car models have been measured in Japan and in The Netherlands.