Bloody robots as emotional design. How emotional structures may change expectations of technology use in hospitals

Abstract

By applying Gilles Fauconnier &amp; Mark Turner’s theory of <em>conceptual blending</em> to a design case I demonstrate how experiencing emotional qualities in technology design may influence the way users cognitively reconstruct standard expectations of use. In so doing, I expand the dominating cognitive theory of emotion in design in three central respects: (i) the understanding of mixed emotions is deepened; (ii) a more detailed explanation is given of the specific operations involved in appraisal processes grounded in embodied interaction; (iii) a structural model is proposed for mapping the constitutive role that mixed emotions play in product usage and interaction.