Love in Lyrics: An Exploration of Supporting Textual Manifestation of Affection in Social Messaging

Speaker:        Mr. Taewook KIM
                MPhil student
                Department of Computer Science and Engineering
                Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Title:          "Love in Lyrics: An Exploration of Supporting Textual
                 Manifestation of Affection in Social Messaging"

Date:           Monday, 28 October 2019

Time:           4:00pm - 5:00pm

Venue:          Lecture Theater F (near lift no. 25/26), HKUST


Abstract:

Affectionate communication, the conveyance of closeness, care, and
fondness for another, plays a key role in romantic relationships. While
the pervasive use of digital technology for communication limits
affectionate interaction through nonverbal cues -- a major channel of
expression in face-to-face settings, there have been few approaches which
scaffold couples' romantic text conversations. To bridge this gap, we
propose a novel interactive system Lily which gives users inspirations to
enrich their romantic expressions in text messaging. It first listens to
users' original input and then recommends romantic lyrics holding the
closest meaning in real-time during chats with partners. After a three-day
empirical study, participants who are real-life couples reported that they
not only received useful cues from Lily in terms of how to polish their
affectionate expressions, but also learnt to enrich the conversation with
topics enlightened by its recommendations. Based on our findings, we
finally provide several design considerations for actual deployment of
such an application.


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Biography:

Taewook Kim is a second year MPhil student in the Department of Computer
Science and Engineering at HKUST. He is advised by Prof. Xiaojuan MA as a
member of the HCI Initiative. He earned his B.S. from Hanyang University
on February 2018. His research in Human-Computer Interaction focuses
on Interpersonal Communication and Affective Computing. He is interested
in designing systems which facilitate users representing their minds. He
builds systems encouraging people more expressive and transparent for
their own emotions in Human-Human Communication, so as to abate stresses
and tensions in their everyday lives.