Cuteness is now an engineering concept. On February 24th, 2008, engineers will gather in Cape Town, South Africa for a workshop on cuteness. The call for participants explains:
Designing Cute Interactive Media
Cuteness has an effective design philosophy that can be used in many areas to make emotionally engaging user interactive systems, as well as evaluate existing systems. Cuteness can also be included as an engineering design framework…The main goal of this workshop is to provide designers with a better understanding of developing ways to enhance the positive experience and effectiveness of interactive media by utilizing the psychological and culturally developed effects of cuteness. We would also like to explore a range of interactive experiences involving the idea of cuteness and examine the related components. Based on these experiences, the next generation user interfaces can be built to take advantage of the cuteness factor and its unique effects
(Thanks to investigators Elaine Chew and Alex Francois for bringing this to our attention.)