Development of Emotion Teaching Interfaces using Emoticons and Emojis

Finger Braille is one of the tactual communication media utilized by deafblind persons. Deafblind persons who are skilled in Finger Braille can communicate words and express various emotions. In this paper, the emotion teaching interface with emoticons and emojis to express joy, sadness and anger for the Finger Braille emotion teaching system were designed. We selected two well expressed Japanese emoticons for each emotions; and selected two emojis for joy and anger and an emoji for sadness, respectively. Sixteen kinds of the emotion teaching interfaces with the emoticons and thirteen kinds of the emotion teaching interfaces with the emojis were designed. The experiment to evaluate the most suitable emotion teaching interfaces with the emoticons or emojis for each emotion was conducted. The results showed that the emoticon Joy 1 with the yellow background color is suitable for joy; the emoticon Sadness 2 with the blue background color is suitable for sadness; the emoticon Anger 1 with the red background color is suitable for anger.