CALLAS

Traditionally, human-computer interaction has concentrated on the usability of applications. That is the objective has been to design applications that enable the user to perform a specified task as effectively and efficiently as possible: applications in this case are primarily regarded as TOOLS. In contrast, the designers of affective interactive applications rather focus on the user's experience: applications in this case are WAYS to analyse and render emotions as part of an interactive system.

CALLAS implements an evaluation approach that encompasses Scientific Showcases and Proof-of-Concepts by stakeholders: the aim is to show the applicability and validity of the CALLAS Framework, Models, and Components.
The approach identifies several settings of art and entertainment for affective computing installations that are using CALLAS technologies: suggested reading:

Bodily Explorations in Space: Social Experience of a Multimodal Art Installation Abstract

Scientific Showcases aim to validate the CALLAS approach to computing the aesthetic user experience, by focusing on evaluating computational models of emotions, multimodal fusion and affective loops. Reference Scientific Showcases are:

• e-Tree: Augmented Reality Art, affective computing is e-Tree, an interactive art installation
• CommonTouch: collective empathic navigation of news on a public multitouch screen.

Proof-of-Concepts aim to demonstrate the applicability of the CALLAS approach by stakeholders, focusing on evaluating the concept and scenarios of applicability using a subset of CALLAS technologies. Reference Proof-of-Concepts are in the area of:

• Affective edutainment: targeting music institutions and museums, aimed at affective presentation of educational content about music;
• Interactive Digital Theater: targeting different types of theaters from puppetry to theater pieces and aiming at augmenting the performer or spectator spaces with affective computing;
• Interactive Storytelling: exploring how we can make use of affective input and output technologies to ensure that rich story content survives the transition to the highly interactive home platforms of the future, being stories the central pillar of news and broadcasting.