Emotional Faucet

Humans interact with machines throughout their daily routines. This project asks the question: can humans attribute an emotional state to actions taken by a machine? Furthermore, if this is true, can the human user be taught to use the machine through an emotional dialogue with the machine? In the case of the emotional faucet, humans would be taught to use water sustainably when accomplishing tasks such as doing the dishes or washing their hands.

A collaborative project with IRIS Lab, working in a team of three with IRIS Lab’s ‘telepathic’ faucet, I designed behavior patterns for the faucet and defined the research question: 'Can humans attribute an emotional state to actions taken by a machine?'. We tracked the user’s response to the faucet’s behavior in a survey and demonstrated people’s tendencies to anthropomorphize these behavior patterns and attribute an emotional state to the faucet for each given pattern.

You can learn more about the results of our research here and watch the video used in our experiment below.