Applied Digital Humanities — Whitworth University
EMOTION SURVEY
Applied Digital Humanities is a course that combines digital tools with humanistic questions, the kind of questions that come from art, culture, psychology, and human experience. The goal isn't just to build something. It's to use technology to explore something deeply human. Instead of a regular computer science project, every student had to find a question they genuinely cared about and use digital skills to investigate it.
For this project, the questions I asked myself were: Is emotion really universal? And does recognizing an emotion actually mean you understand it?
YEAR
DURATION
Role
Participants
2025
1 Semester
Artist
Developer
Researcher
25 ~ 30 People
EMOTION SURVEY
Two sTATEMENTS THAT STARTED EVERYTHING
Most people assume that emotions look the same everywhere, that fear is fear and happiness is happiness, no matter what background you come from. But that's not the full picture. Just because someone can label an emotion doesn't mean they interpret it the same way as someone else.
The chosen format was Interaction Art, combining fine art and computer science into a single experience. Instead of asking people to tick a box, the goal was to make them genuinely feel something, reflect on it, and describe it themselves. The design was inspired by the Netflix Dark series website (dark.netflix.io), which uses animation and interactive storytelling to draw you in. That same sense of engagement and atmosphere was what this survey aimed for.
Emotion is not universal
Recognition is not understanding
Emotion Survey
DESIGN PROCESS
Research & Proposal
WRITING THE PROJECT PROPOSAL
Before building anything, a full written proposal was completed. This laid out the research question, the hypothesis, how the survey would work, what rules participants would follow, and how the data would be collected and analyzed. This proposal became the foundation for all subsequent decisions and was submitted as the first deliverable for the class.
Research & Proposal
SETTING THE RULES FOR HONEST DATA
Three specific rules were set before anything was built, to make sure the data collected would be real and honest rather than influenced or pressured:
No going back
Once you answer, you cannot change it. The goal was to capture the first, instinctive emotional reaction, not a second-guessed one. Since emotions shift with the moment, the very first response is the most honest.
No, seeing other answers until the end
Participants could not see other people's responses while taking the survey. This prevented any pressure to pick the "correct" emotion or compare themselves to others. The focus was entirely on their own honest reaction.
Randomized image order
The 6 artworks were shown in a different random order for every participant. This ensured that the sequence didn't influence how people felt; their reactions would come naturally, not shaped by what came right before.
Art Direction
CREATING THE ORIGINAL ARTWORK
The images used in the survey are not stock photos; they are original artworks made by hand using pencil and pen, based on a personal art style developed over several years. The original plan was to create new sketches featuring one simple object each, but after spending about a week on them, they didn't feel authentic. They felt like someone else's work. So that direction was completely abandoned, and time was spent reviewing existing artwork to choose 6 strong pieces instead.
The number was also reduced from 10 to 6 because asking students, faculty, and professors to spend almost an hour on a free survey felt like too much. All 6 pieces share a similar style and medium, so participants would focus on the emotion rather than be distracted by completely different aesthetics.
Surrealism in Box
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UX & Flow Design
DESIGNING THE FULL SURVEY EXPERIENCE
Every page was carefully planned before the building started. The experience was designed so that each step felt intentional, not just a form but a journey through reflection. The homepage was kept completely minimal and monotone so that users wouldn't feel any strong emotion just from looking at it. One detail that stood out was the light switch interaction on the homepage. When users turn it on, the text appears:
"Emotion is not Universal, Recognition is not Understanding."
Nanum SE Gye Jeog In Han Geur
AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHh123
Dark Grey
#404040
White
#FFFFFF
Home Page
Minimal monotone design. A light switch interaction that reveals the project's core message. No strong emotions were triggered intentionally, neutral.
About page
The project proposal page. Explains why this project exists and what it's trying to prove.
Instructions page
Clear instructions before the survey begins, so every participant knows exactly what to expect.
6 survey pages (randomized
Each page: artwork image → free-write text box → drag-and-drop emotional map (Happiness / Sadness / Fear / Anger) → submit.
A 5-second black screen between every artwork to let participants mentally reset.
Thank you page
A closing message sharing the project's meaning and what the survey was really trying to communicate about art and emotion.
Development
Building the website
The full website was built from scratch. This was the first time using Flask at this scale, and HTML, CSS, and JavaScript were re-learned and applied in a real project context.
Home Page
Flask handled the entire backend routing between pages, shuffled and stored the randomized image order in sessions, received each answer and saved it to a CSV file, and provided a private data-viewing page during the live collection period.
Each artwork had its own CSV file (survey_1.csv through survey_6.csv), recording the timestamp, the participant's free-written words, and the emotional category they dragged their answer into.
About Page
Intro Page
Survey Page
Thank You Page
Deploying the live website
The website was deployed using Render, a cloud hosting platform that keeps the app running live on the internet. Because setting up a proper domain was complicated, the site was shared via Whitworth University's Wi-Fi network, which limited access. Despite that, 25–30 students, faculty members, and professors participated. Participants were reached through email, Discord, and messaging apps, often right before finals week, when everyone was already busy.
Analyzing the data in Excel
After collection, the CSV files were brought into Excel to find patterns. The top words written for each artwork were identified, and the percentages for each emotional category were calculated. Some results matched expectations, but others were surprising. For example, some people described the camera artwork as curious or searching for meaning in the empty space. A simple drawing of a toilet made many people feel disgusted rather than neutral or amused. The same image produced genuinely different emotions in different people, which was the whole point.
Writing the final report on Notion
After analyzing all the data, a full-report-style blog post was written in Notion documenting the entire process, the research question, design decisions, results, patterns discovered, and final conclusions. This served as the written academic deliverable for the class and is linked in the completed project.
Emotion Survey
REFLECTION
Most of the emotions people described were similar to what was originally hoped to be communicated through each artwork, but not exactly the same for everyone. Some people saw a bird's head on the cup and described it plainly. Others called it creepy or unsettling. The empty space in the camera artwork made many people curious, as if they were searching for something that wasn't there. Even a drawing of a toilet produced disgust in most people rather than humor or indifference.
Every artwork elicited a range of emotional responses among participants. No artwork produced the exact same emotion in everyone. That difference, that spread of interpretation, was the proof the project was looking for.
Emotion Survey
WHAT WAS LEARNED
This project pushed in two completely different directions at the same time. On the technical side, learning Flask and building a real backend from scratch was new territory. On the art and research side, the challenge was designing questions that didn't lead people, leaving space for honest, uninfluenced reaction.
The biggest lesson: bringing Fine Art, Computer Science, and Humanistic Research together produced something that none of those fields could have done alone. The website is the art. The data is the argument. And the conclusion is that emotion is shaped by who you are, what you've experienced, and how you've learned to see the world.