Tuesday, 28 July, 08:30 - 12:30 EDT (Eastern Daylight Time - Canada)
Tânia Ribeiro (short bio)
DigiMedia University of Aveiro, Portugal
Ana Isabel Veloso (short bio)
DigiMedia University of Aveiro, Portugal
Peter Brinson (short bio)
Interactive Media & Games Division, University of Southern California, USA
Modality
on-site
Room: TBA
Target Audience
researchers/academia, professionals, industry
Requirements for participants
Course participants should bring their own laptop or tablet
Abstract
This course introduces Creating Empathic Characters: A Method (CEC Method), the SILVER Award-winning toolkit from the HCI International 2024 Student Design Competition. The CEC Method is a rigorously developed, structured design instrument addressing a critical gap in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI): the lack of formal, empirically backed methodologies for crafting emotionally resonant digital characters and interactive agents.
The core of this method is the Information Hypothesis Theory, which proposes that empathy in interactive systems is communicated information. A character's ability to foster a deep connection depends on the coherence and richness of the information conveyed about their life and conflicts. Developed through four years of grounded theory research, including expert interviews, character analysis (N=393), and player surveys (N=301), the resulting model systematically identifies four core design principles: Personality, Life Foundation, Path and Conflict, and Appearance.
In this course, participants will engage directly with the physical, Fluxus-inspired CEC toolkit, using its instruction cards (Event Scores). This analog, instruction-based approach shifts character development from deterministic prototyping to a guided, co-creative, and psychologically deep exploration, proven to enhance character coherence. Attendees will learn how to implement this empirically-backed methodology to design highly coherent and emotionally authentic interactive agents, virtual companions, playable characters, or personas, gaining a powerful new tool for research and professional practice in emotional design and human-computer interaction.
Benefits for attendees
This hands-on course is designed for professionals and researchers seeking to master the process of creating emotionally resonant and coherent digital characters. Attendees will gain proficiency in the Creating Empathic Characters (CEC) Method, an advanced, structured design methodology that transforms character development from a subjective endeavour into a rigorous, systematic process. The course empowers professionals to operationalise emotional design, ensuring the resulting interactive entities possess demonstrable narrative and psychological coherence.
Specific professional gains include:
- For UX Designers and Researchers: Mastery of the CEC Method allows for the construction of psychologically complex and credible personas, enhancing the efficacy and relatability of user models for service design and system testing.
- For AI/Agent Programmers: The course provides a structured framework for defining a character's informational network—its core motivations, life experiences, and conflict responses—which can be translated directly into behavioral rulesets and emotional state machines for Artificial Intelligent companions or virtual assistants.
- For Narrative Designers and Game Developers: Participants gain a methodology to systematically create characters for high-engagement experiences, such as adventure games and serious games, ensuring characters are resilient against plot holes and maintain emotional integrity throughout complex, non-linear narratives.
Course Content
This course aims to equip designers and researchers with an advanced, conceptually-rich methodology for creating emotionally resonant and narratively coherent characters for interactive digital systems and empirical HCI research. By the end of this intensive course, participants will be able to:
- Understand and apply the Information Hypothesis Theory, demonstrating how to quantify and predict a character's capacity for emotional resonance based on informational coherence.
- Systematically utilise the four core components of the Creating Empathic Characters (CEC) Method to develop a complete psychological and narrative profile for a digital entity.
- Apply Instructional Design: Engage in structured co-creation using the analog toolkit, transforming subjective design intuition into a shared, iterative, and verifiable process.
- Translate the resulting high-coherence analog profiles into actionable design specifications for implementation in complex interactive systems (e.g., AI logic, state machines, UX persona documentation).
Table of Contents:
- Introduction and theory
- Why empathy? The challenge of deterministic design in HCI.
- Benefits of emotional design.
- Research Background: The "Empathy as Information" hypothesis and the necessity of informational coherence.
- Hands-on creation
- What is the CEC method?
- How does it work? Let's prototype: Hands-on application of all four core categories (Life Foundation, Personality, Path & Conflict and Appearance)
- Wrapping up and takeaway
- Application & Translation: Converting analog profiles into digital specifications.
Bio Sketches of Course instructors
Tânia Ribeiro holds a Ph.D. in Information and Communication in Digital Platforms and is a researcher at the DigiMedia Research Center at the University of Aveiro, Portugal. Her doctoral work centered on developing design models for creating playable and non-playable characters for interactive systems, particularly focusing on empathy and emotional engagement. Tânia is the lead developer of Creating Empathic Characters: A Method toolkit, the practical outcome of her doctoral research. She has extensive experience as a freelancer integrating theoretical research into practical design processes, with published work presented at multiple international conferences.
Ana Isabel Veloso is a Full Professor and Head of the Department of Communication and Art (DeCA) at the University of Aveiro (UA), Portugal. She is a renowned academic in the fields of Digital Games, Human-Computer Interaction, and digital health, and is a coordinator of the "Digital Health" Research Group at DigiMedia. Professor Veloso served as the scientific supervisor for the research that produced the CEC Method, providing the intellectual sensibility and guidance that defined the project's scientific foundation and direction. Her expertise lies in applying human-centered design to digital platforms and guiding innovative academic research.
University of Aveiro Profile
Google Scholar Profile
ResearchGate Profile
Peter Brinson is an game designer, filmmaker, and Professor of Practice at the University of Southern California’s (USC) School of Cinematic Arts. His creative work, exhibited at venues like the Museum of Modern Art and Ars Electronica, explores unique narrative possibilities through documentary play and animal protagonists. This deep expertise in crafting unconventional and empathetic characters was vital in translating the CEC Method from a theoretical model into a usable design tool, a process he guided by leading the initial case study at USC.