# EmoWear: Exploring Emotional Teasers for Voice Message Interaction on Smartwatches

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.07174 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.07174/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 7 of its 88 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Feb 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [GoEmotions: A Dataset of Fine-Grained Emotions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.00547/) (2020)
- [Speech-Text Dialog Pre-training for Spoken Dialog Understanding with Explicit Cross-Modal Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.11579/) (2023)
- [Animo: Sharing Biosignals on a Smartwatch for Lightweight Social Connection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.06427/) (2019)
- [Significant Otter: Understanding the Role of Biosignals in Communication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.08235/) (2021)
- [Creating Emordle: Animating Word Cloud for Emotion Expression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.07560/) (2023)
- [VibEmoji: Exploring User-authoring Multi-modal Emoticons in Social Communication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.13555/) (2021)
- [Affective Affordance of Message Balloon Animations: An Early Exploration of AniBalloons](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.11356/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Chaplains' Reflections on the Design and Usage of AI for Conversational Care](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.04017/) (2026)
- [Affect Models Have Weak Generalizability to Atypical Speech](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.16283/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Voice messages, by nature, prevent users from gauging the emotional tone without fully diving into the audio content. This hinders the shared emotional experience at the pre-retrieval stage. Research scarcely explored "Emotional Teasers"-pre-retrieval cues offering a glimpse into an awaiting message's emotional tone without disclosing its content. We introduce EmoWear, a smartwatch voice messaging system enabling users to apply 30 animation teasers on message bubbles to reflect emotions. EmoWear eases senders' choice by prioritizing emotions based on semantic and acoustic processing. EmoWear was evaluated in comparison with a mirroring system using color-coded message bubbles as emotional cues (N=24). Results showed EmoWear significantly enhanced emotional communication experience in both receiving and sending messages. The animated teasers were considered intuitive and valued for diverse expressions. Desirable interaction qualities and practical implications are distilled for future design. We thereby contribute both a novel system and empirical knowledge concerning emotional teasers for voice messaging.