Emotional character design: an emotion-oriented perspective on developing empathy

Abstract

<p>Empathy is composed of cognitive understanding and emotional empathy. With its root in interpersonal relationships, cognitive understanding is rational and focuses on specific targets based on personal conceptions. On the other hand, emotional empathy directly connects to the feelings of others on an emotional level. Attention and memory play an important role in decoding information to trigger responses to emotional sources. The author developed an online interview and survey using the emotion color wheel provided by Robert Plutchik. Six volunteers participated in both types of investigations. The interview helped identify consistency among behaviors, language expressions, and emotions in four topics: social media, love, fear, and the inner self. The survey ranked the emotions of each participant and the reasons for the selection. From the results of the interview and survey, the author created six series of illustrations. Each series of illustrations contained a portrayal of the participants and four emotional characters. There were 30 pieces of illustrations in total. The author further created a gallery website to present the project's concept, research, and illustrations. This study concluded with the evaluation and limitations of empathizing through emotional experiences and presenting results in visuals. According to this study, the author also proposed ideas for further approaches.</p>