The laughing dress

Abstract

Our research introduces a responsive wearable design that explores laughter as an emotional contagion between strangers in a public space. We investigate how interactive wearable technology can support expression and communication through laughter as prosocial behaviour within the context of a public art installation. We base our design on psychological research that explores emotional contagions and psychophysiological mirroring. While most of this research has focused primarily on internal biological data, there is little design research that has investigated the phenomenon of emotional contagion in a social space utilizing wearable technology, particularly within HCI. We conducted a mixed methods pilot study, which has indicated that wearable technology can create affordances for emotional mimicry by testing the effectiveness of visual and auditory cues embedded within the wearable design. Our research provides insight to help evaluate effective design strategies in wearable interaction that can ameliorate positive social interaction between people.