Situational Interest is an emotional attention produced by a stimuli. It is directed to a informational content that emerges out of the learning platform. This is not intrinsically produced, and is prone to fade after the stimuli.

"Situational interest is different from learners’ individual interest, which describes their intrinsic desire and tendency to engage in a particular subject matter or activity over time. Situational interest is of importance as research has found that it is essential in the development of individual interest."

Design applications to digital games reveal three main factors that increase or trigger situational interest:


• Social Mode of Learning Activity


• Use of rewards


•Mechanics

Situational Interest

According to the Guided Activity Principle, students perform better in learning tasks when a pedagogical guide is present in a learning platform.

"Ani-mated pedagogical agents play instructional roles to support sociocognitive
aspects of multimedia learning; can follow social conventions; and provide
empathetic responses to learners (Hayes-Roth & Doyle, 1998). These agents
are represented visually, often with human features, and with optional auditory
(speech) features."

This phenomena calls for emotionally intelligent human-computer interactions. A virtual guide could adjust their approach and emotional expressions after noticing emotional fluctuations in the user. 


While this sounds like a technical challenge in the field of human-computer interaction, a short-cut method could be applied, in which a team of researchers and designers "predict" emotional changes in the user in certain sections of a platform, and install a virtual guide that help the user learn content more effectively.

Emotional Design - Guided Activity Principle

Emotion is tightly connected with interactions in a very general sense, including user-to-user interactions. The INTERACT model states that users' behavioral, emotional, and cognitive activities affect one another during learning.

Potential design models under the INTERACT model include:

•Situational interest

•Guided Activity Principle




Haverford College in Pennsylvania

According to research in psychology and neuroscience, learning is not only grounded in cognitive factors but also in emotional factors.  Therefore, learning platforms must take into account not just cognitive efficiency but also an attractive platform that enhances positive emotions in the users. 

Here are four distinct subject under emotional design in digital learning: 

• Emotional Design Through Information Representation

• Emotional Design Through Interactive Design

• Situational Interest

• Guided Activity Principle


Emotion and Learning in Design 

https://uxplanet.org/the-ultimate-ux-hook-anticipatory-persuasive-and-emotional-design-in-ux-53b65ac778d

https://medium.muz.li/the-art-of-emotion-normans-3-levels-of-emotional-design-88a1fb495b1d

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309313629_Emotional_Design_in_Digital_Media_for_Learning

Emotional Design Reference

In the context of information representation on digital learning platforms, physically attractive stimuli can impact emotions and thus have a positive impact on learning—“what is beautiful is good” (Dion, Berscheid, & Walster, 1972). " Research on shapes and colors shed light on the particular ways in which aesthetic understanding can impact learning.

Some hypotheses under emotional design through information representation include:

•Visual Design

•Baby-face Bias


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