Pick-a-mood; development and application of a pictorial mood-reporting instrument

Pick-a-mood; development and application of a pictorial mood-reporting instrument

Desmet, P.M.A.
Vastenburg, M.H.
Van Bel, D.
Romero Herrera, N.A.

Industrial Design Engineering

Industrial Design

2012-12-31

This paper presents ‘Pick-A-Mood’ (PAM), a cartoon-based pictorial instrument for reporting and expressing moods. The use of cartoon characters enables people to unambiguously and visually express or report their mood in a rich and easy-to-use way. PAM consists of three characters that each express eight different mood states, representing four main mood categories: energized-pleasant (excited and cheerful), energized-unpleasant (irritated and tense), calm-pleasant (relaxed and calm), and calm-unpleasant (bored and sad). The added value of PAM compared to existing instruments, is that it requires little time and effort of the respondents, which makes it suitable for design research applications, which are often used in situations in which people have little time or motivation to report their moods. Mood is defined, a brief review of existing instruments is provided, and the development and validation of PAM is reported. Various design (research) applications are presented, illustrating that PAM can be used both as a tool for measurement (i.e. to enable researchers to measure the moods of their respondents) and as a tool for communication (i.e. to enable people to communicate their mood in social interactions).

mood measurement, well-being, remote social interaction

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:12d907ec-f64d-479b-875e-598384560bde

978-0-9570719-2-6

Out of Control: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Design and Emotion, London, UK, 11-14 September 2012

Institutional Repository

conference paper

(c)2012 The Authors