1 Introduction

In the early 2000s, revolution of the handheld devices occurred, changing from feature phone to the smart phone. This significant change in the user environment allowed users to experience greater degree of freedom on their interface. Along with this greater degree of freedom on usage of handheld devices, demand for personalization among the users has increased. Personalization of hand-held devices is significant since it fulfills individual’s preference and increases productivity, satisfying the users’ needs in general.

Indeed, software experienced significant development on personalization. However, hardware of the devices did not experience as significant change as the software development. Hardware of the devices is still limited, maintaining rigid and rectangular-shaped feature. Thus, hardware of the future handheld devices will be personalized in a way that the users can use them in more intuitive way alongside with the technology development. We perceive that personifying the deformable handheld device will fulfill the users’ needs on personalization of their handheld devices. Herein, throughout this paper, we argue that the degree of angle, speed and continuity of the movement and positioning of the devices are the key variants that play decisive role to personify future handheld devices.

2 Background

2.1 Personification Design

Relational researches and aestheticians perceive that people tend to be attracted to things that are familiar or similar to them. They argue that people perceive human-like of animal-like characteristics to be more beautiful because they unconsciously feel pleasured from them [2]. Related to this relational research, Uncertainty Reduction theory argues that this familiarity is crucial on developing any kinds or relationship, between human to human or between human to devices [2].

As Reeves and Nass also [13] advocates on their book, “The Media Equation”, people tend to unconsciously treat computers, television and new media as if they were real people or real place [13]. In the other words, due to psychological and social factors, people tend to equate the media (x) equals to real people (y); x = y. Thus, as they argue it is necessary to “give computers some personality” for successful design of the interactive technical products [13].

This Uncertainty Reduction theory and Media Equation theory suggests that personification, giving human characteristics to non-human entities, will be one of the major promising design for the future technical products. For instance, designers tend to use human or animal’s biological characteristics in order to attract and implement meanings on the object. Most well-known examples of personified technologies include humanoid robots, and other various robotic researches design their robots also use animal creatures to increase social interaction and support emotional bonding with humans [10, 16]. Thus, for successful commercialization of future technology, flexible handheld devices, it should maintain personified characteristics when it is first introduced into the public.

2.2 Flexible Display

There are various studies which investigated how the users may interact with the flexible devices [6–9, 11, 12, 14, 15]. There are various kinds of ways to change the shape of flexible displays, such as corner bending, swinging, rolling flipping, folding, twisting, crumpling, curving and zero-crossing. These kinds of shape changes can be implemented in different levels according to different factors. For instance, as Warren et al. [15] investigated how angle of the bending display can result different user experience, and Pederson et al. [11] also recognizes the role of speed on flexible display. However, how these variables influence emotional integration with the users is not widely explored.

There also had been researches which link the display with the emotions of the users [1, 3, 11]. Pederson et al. acknowledge that there is emotional response on the flexible display using Circumplex Model of Emotion, although they argue that it is not provide volatile feeling [11]. Bailenson et al. also recognizes how emotion factor is closely related to the user experience of haptic display using Paul Ekman’s six basic emotions [1]. Paul Ekman’s six basic emotions is the emotion model that propose that the happy, sadness, anger, fear, disgust and surprise are the universal basic emotions as it was identified by the analysis of facial expression of the people from different background [4, 5]. Likewise, we use six basic emotions for the analysis in this study because we believe that among various models of emotion, six basic emotions are the basic emotions that should be first introduced for the emotionally interactive flexible device in the future.

3 Methods

In order to find how people would personalize their personified flexible devices in the future, we conducted interview on 10 South Korean volunteers. The average age of the participants are 35.4, years old (SD = 13.92), where were male and 5 were female. On average, they commonly use 3 devices (SD = 0.94) on daily basis, and change their handheld devices every 25.2 months on average (SD = 6.81). Based on the seven point scale, participants rated average 4.7 on expected satisfaction on flexible devices that express emotion.

The interview lasted between 9–12 min for each participant. In the interview, clear plastic film that was cut and drawn into the size of iPhone 6 was given to the participants and was asked to freely personify the device based on 6 basic emotions of Paul Ekman. As they freely shape the plastic film to express the emotion, they were also asked how differently do they feel when they were bent, rolled, twisted the device in different angle and speed.

4 Result

4.1 Personification of Personified Devices

Through twisting, rolling, bending, curving and corner bending, participants personified the plastic film based on 6 basic emotion of Paul Ekman (see Table 1). Overall, participants preferred to express their emotion by bending> corner bending> rolling> twisting. Some emotion, such as ‘disgust’ and ‘surprise’, was personified similarly among most participants, created from the body image of a person vomiting when they are disgusted, and the a person bending their body backwards when they are surprised. However, for the other emotions, participants created different feature for the personification of devices.

Table 1. Personification of flexible device based on six basic emotions
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For the most cases, the participants personified the device by perceiving the device-like plastic film as a human body. They imagined how their body moves when they feel such emotion, such as wave dancing when they are happy. They also personified their emotion by implementing facial expression, such as the movement of eyebrows and the shape of the lips. Apart from the body and facial movement, they tried to express the emotion abstractly, how their mind feels like when they are experiencing such feeling. For instance, P2 expressed ‘anger’ by rolling the device because his said his mind feel extremely small and self-protected when he feels angry.

4.2 Factors Influencing Emotion of Flexible Devices

For the in-depth analysis, affinity diagram was used to organize meaningful comments and ideas of the participants (see Fig. 1). The factors that influenced personification of flexible devices include the degree of angle and the speed of the movement as it was studied among other previous researches, and meaningfully, positioning of the device and consistency of the movement also provide different emotion to the participants.

Fig. 1.
figure 1

Affinity diagram of the interview

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Degree of Angle.

Most of the participants argued that different degree of angle provide different emotion. Six of the participants commented that the degree of angle plays crucial role on intensity of the emotion. For instance, P7 said that when the device with top corners bended is bent at smaller degree, it provides sad emotion, and when it is bended at larger degree, it provides the image of a person who is deeply depressed.

On the other hand, three participants viewed that implementing different degree of angle provide completely different emotion. For example, P9 said when the device is bent forward at 90°, it seems like a person vomiting, and when it is completely bent at 180, it gives the image of a person who is experiencing sadness. When it is slightly bent, at 20° for instance, it comes up with the image of a person who is bowing, a kind of way to greet the others in Asian culture.

Only one participant commented that different degree of angle does not provide any emotional change.

Speed of the Movement.

All of the participants agreed that implementing different speed on the same movement and position of the handheld device can present different feeling to the users. For instance, as P1 argues, when the device rolls quickly, it seems like the device is trying escape or protect itself from the fearful situation. However, if the device rolls slowly, it looks like it is hiding itself from the others because it feels diffident or shy.

Consistency of the Movement.

Through the interview, two main issues came up in relation to consistency of the movement of the flexible devices. Firstly, the device that moves single time provides different emotion from the device that moves repetitively. P4 commented that when the device quickly bends backwards single time, it seems like it is very surprised. However, when it repetitively bends backwards, it comes up with the image of children who are pestering for something to their parents.

Secondly, the device that consistently moves regularly gives different emotion form the device that moves irregularly. For instance, P5 commented that the movement of a device which create wave-like feature gives different body images. If the device moves at regular rhythmic speed, it seems like it is dancing. However, when the device moves irregularly, changing its speed from slow to fast and fast to slow, P5 recognize the device that is impatient and nervous.

Positioning.

Although the device is bent at the same angle, positioning the device can provide different emotion to the individuals. For example, flexible device that is bending forwards slightly when it is standing present bowing gesture in Asian culture or nodding in Western culture. Although the device bent at the same angle, when the device bends forwards slightly when it is lying down drew the image of a person waking up.

5 Discussion

Taking Uncertainty Reduction theory and Media Equation theory to be valid, users will be more attracted to personified handheld devices in the future. Handheld devices can be personified through bending, twisting, rolling and corner bending the flexible display.

There may be contending perspectives on how to personify the handheld devices because each individual can perceive differently on what emotion does the personified device is trying to express. Here, instead of standardizing the movement of personified flexible display, we believe that future flexible display is more likely to be personalized among the users because apart from the social trend among users to characterize themselves from the others, personalization of the devices also plays crucial role on productivity. Indeed, this study finds that the users tend to personify the device in each personal ways, taking images of facial expression or body movement, or how their mind feel like abstractly.

For the personalization of personified flexible devices in the future, degree of angle, speed and consistency of the movement and positioning of the device should be considered as a key variant for the technological development of flexible display. The users would be able to freely personalize the movement of the flexible display that expresses emotion by controlling these variables.

6 Conclusion

Throughout this paper, we find two observations through the interview on 10 participants. First, people tend to personify the device by using how they express the emotion through their face or body movement, or how their mind abstractly feels like. Secondly, variants that influence personified bending display include: the degree of angle, speed and consistency of the movement and the position of the device. This study is significant as it outlines what factors should be considered to personalize the future flexible handheld devices.

Limitation and Future Work.

The limitation of this paper is that the interview was held among South Koreans only. Thus, cross-cultural study on how the users from different backgrounds personify the flexible display can be researched for the future study. This study also does not suggest specified digit on what angle, which position and how fast the device provides the specific emotion. For the further research, these specific digits can be investigated. Matching the personified movement with the function that the device can provide can also be an interesting research for the future work. Although this paper focuses on the personification of handheld devices, it would also be interesting to see how people personify other kinds of devices, such as tablet PC or wearable devices.