Enhancing User Engagement on Web Platforms through Emotion-Aware Interaction Design

Abstract

User engagement enhances web platform performance by augmenting satisfaction, retention, and conversion. The traditional user-centered design focuses more on the task context and often neglects the emotional context, thereby greatly limiting its ability to create engaged users. This research proposes emotion-aware interaction design (EAID) as a new framework that strives to enhance user engagement by detecting users' emotional states and responding to them in real time. This study presents a framework which adjusts feedback mechanisms as well as content selection interfaces, colors, tone of voice used, and even the recommendation systems based on the emotions determined through face and speech analysis, sentiment score derivation from text, and other techniques. A prototype was created and tested on an educational website with two hundred participants. The participants' engagement levels were measured through time on task, return rates, and self-reported satisfaction. The results demonstrated that participants using the EAID system retained users 21% willing to spend additional time completing tasks, and increased average task completion by 18% compared to the control group. These results validate the hypothesis that increased emotional involvement in interaction design deepens users’ relationships with applications and services leading to more fulfilling and engaging experiences. This research seeks to pave the way for the use of affective computing in everyday design frameworks and demonstrates the use of emotion-aware interfaces as a means for fostering empathy within digital environments.