DESIGNING FOR KNOWLEDGE-BASED FAMILIARITY, TRUST, AND ACCEPTANCE: THE CASE OF AFFECTIVE TECHNOLOGY

With the ability to recognize human emotions, so-called affective technology has the potential to provide highly adaptive service to its user in many different areas such as learning, health care, or manufacturing. However, there are specific barriers for the acceptance of affective technology because most people are unfamiliar with the affective components of such technologies and, hence, do not trust them. Assuming that increasing the knowledge-based familiarity with an affective technology is essential for accepting it, so far, only little is known about appropriate design concepts to increase the familiarity and, as a consequence , the acceptance of affective technology. To close this gap, we follow a Design Science approach laying out an explanatory design theory for knowledge-based familiarity and acceptance of affective technology. We argue that familiarity with a technology is built by gaining knowledge about the emotional state the system has recognized and the subsequent behavior of the system and such knowledge will be gained by providing suitable feedback. We develop different designs for feedback systems of an affective technology and propose corresponding design hypotheses. This research-in-progress concludes with the planned experimental approach varying feedback content and feedback explanation