Moodsource: Enabling perceptual and emotional feedback from crowds

The emotional reaction of an audience to a design can be difficult to assess but valuable to know. Moodsource allows intuitive visual communication between crowds and designers. A crowd responds to a design with selections from image banks. Visual summarization reduces the massed image choices down to a few representative images to be consumed at a glance by designer users. In two studies crowd users reported their ability to express emotions with the Moodsource image browsers and with text. Cognitive styles theories suggest users can be visual or verbal thinkers; crowd users preferring images thought they could express emotions equally well with abstract images as with text. Designer users "reading" the visual feedback reported that it represented the perceived mood from their designs and were inspired to make improvements.