The Presence of Emotion: Designing the Feeling of Being There in Interactive Media Experiences

We discuss key psychological factors relevant to the design of interactive experiences with intended specific emotional impacts: the sense of presence, reality judgement, and awareness of the need for embodied responses. The extent to which a participant experiences a sense of presence (the feeling of being there) within an external environment is particularly important, but is complicated by the fact that mediated experiences are influenced by many other factors, including mental media schemata, which vary across cultures, across historical timescales, and within and between individuals. We expand on these factors in relation to three example interactive environments, each designed to invoke specific emotional responses and types of experience.