Tangible Affect: A Literature Review of Tangible Interactive Systems Addressing Human Core Affect, Emotions and Moods

Tangible user interfaces (TUIs) have been applied to assess, communicate, or regulate human core affect, emotions, or moods. Previous studies identified TUIs as an innovative way to serve people's affective needs. This review examines the design and evaluation of tangible interactive systems that focus on human core affect, emotions, and moods. We provide an overview of current studies. We summarize how tangibility can be leveraged to support affective interaction, and we propose the dimensions of tangible affective interaction, deriving guidelines for design. We highlight three main challenges: understanding tangible affective interaction within real-life scenarios, utilizing embodied interaction to express or influence affective states, and establishing benchmarks for evaluating tangible affective interfaces.