Artefatos Tangíveis e a Avaliação de Estados Afetivos por Crianças

Modern and ubiquitous computational systems increasingly demand more evaluations, which consider aspects beyond ergonomy, usability and accessibility to include means of understanding the affective states of those involved in the interaction. Nevertheless, whenever the involved parties are predominantly children, it becomes necessary to promote ludic and accessible means of involving people in the evaluation activities, because it is expected that the assessment tool used allows all stakeholders to express themselves according to their age and understanding. Existing studies have proposed abstract solutions that difficult the comprehension and participation of those involved in the expression of affective states. In this article, we developed and evaluated the TangiSAM environment, which includes sets of tridimensional concrete manikins that take advantage of tangible technologies, allowing the assessment of affective states in a ludic manner. We conducted an evaluation in a real-world educational setting, including both children and teachers, in order to understand whether the TangiSAM’s tangible artifacts favor a better self-evaluation experience. We found that TangiSAM was more frequently assigned as the most favorite by the participants in the comparison to other affective-state representation proposals.