Kawaii Computing: Scoping Out the Japanese Notion of Cute inUser Experiences with Interactive Systems
Yijia Wang

Katie Seabornwang.y.cf@m.titech.ac.jp
Tokyo Institute of Technology
Tokyo, Japanseaborn.k.aa@m.titech.ac.jp
Tokyo Institute of Technology
Tokyo, Japan

ABSTRACT
Kawaii computing is a new term for a steadily growing body of workon the Japanese notion of “cute” in human-computer interaction(HCI) research and practice. Kawaii is distinguished from general
notions of cute by its experiential and culturally-sensitive nature.
While it can be designed into the appearance and behaviour ofinteractive agents, interfaces, and systems, kawaii also refers tocertain affective and cultural dimensions experienced by culturally
Japanese users, i.e., kawaii user experiences (UX) and mental models
of kawaii elicited by the socio-cultural context of Japan. In thisscoping review, we map out the ways in which kawaii has been
explored within HCI research and related fields as a factor of designand experience. We illuminate theoretical and methodological gaps
and opportunities for future work on kawaii computing.

CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → Human computer interaction (HCI); • General and reference → Surveys and overviews;• Applied computing → Psychology.

KEYWORDS
Kawaii computing, kawaii, computer agents, virtual characters,
robots, scoping review, literature review, human-computer interaction
ACM Reference Format:
Yijia Wang and Katie Seaborn. 2024. Kawaii Computing: Scoping Out theJapanese Notion of Cute in User Experiences with Interactive Systems. In
Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems (CHI EA ’24), May 11–16, 2024, Honolulu, HI, USA. ACM, New York,NY, USA, 9 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3613905.3651001

1

INTRODUCTION”Kawaii” is the Japanese term for ”cute,” simply put. Kawaii is recognized the world over as representative of Japanese popular culture [55]. Not limited in Japan, kawaii has been adopted as a global
phenomenon across various forms of media and beyond [81]. It
plays a critical role in the worldwide success of many Japanese
products [38] and cultural exports [31, 39], such as Hello Kitty [34]and the Pokémon series of anime and games [2]. Although kawaii
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ACM ISBN 979-8-4007-0331-7/24/05
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is associated with the general idea of ”cute” and often translated
into English as ”cute,” there are nuanced differences between theseconcepts that psychological research has linked to Japanese culture [56]. Kawaii has positive meanings, such as lovable, adorable,
pretty, charming, and sometimes pity [6, 35, 36, 56, 69, 81]. However, kawaii is not only a matter of appearance, but also a positive
affective response that, among Japanese people, can be heightenedby the social context [58].
The concept of kawaii has been explored in psychology from
cognitive science and behavioural perspectives [55, 56, 58]. A small
amount of work in human-computer interaction (HCI), humanrobot interaction (HRI), and human-agent interaction (HAI) [15, 79]
has followed suit. A wide array of often disconnected work exists.
Kawaii has been explored in agent design (e.g., crafting agents withkawaii features to improve user ratings [77, 78]), user experience
or UX (e.g., people having more tolerance [41], care responses toagents [51]), interpretive frameworks (e.g., a visual framework ofkawaii attributes [86], and user models, including those grounded inparticipant data [36, 37]). However, little research has distinguishedkawaii and cute clearly in HCI context. This makes it difficult toclarify what is meant by ”kawaii,” especially when the term is usedoutside of the Japanese context, i.e., without Japanese researchers,
designers, and/or users (e.g., compare [96]) and [77]). Indeed, there
is yet no kawaii computing ”field of study” nor consensus, such as
by way of a systematic review. This creates a disconnect between
HCI and related domains with the strong theoretical and empiricalfoundation established in psychology [55, 56, 58]. We appear tohave a gap in our understanding of how kawaii has been, could be,
and perhaps should be explored in HCI and adjacent fields.
In this preliminary work, we offer a scoping review [48, 89] tobetter understand how kawaii has been used in HCI and related
fields as a factor of interaction design and UX. Our goal was tomap out and delineate kawaii computing as a concrete domain
in HCI. To this end, we asked several sub-questions so as to becomprehensive in our coverage of the research content offered bythis wide-reaching literature: What is ”kawaii”? How has it been
defined and operationalized? What fields and contexts of use has
kawaii been explored in? What agents, interfaces, and systems havebeen deemed to embody kawaii design? What methods have been
employed to study it as a UX phenomenon? What factors have beenfound to influence user perceptions of and reactions to kawaii?
How has kawaii been approached as an object of study in HCI? We
contribute a map of research that may be characterized as kawaii
computing, as well as identify gaps and opportunities for future
work. We set the stage for a more robust kawaii future in HCI.

CHI EA ’24, May 11–16, 2024, Honolulu, HI, USA

2

METHODSWe carried out a scoping review of the literature using the guidelines
by Munn et al. [48] and the protocol offered by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for
Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) [89]. The purpose of a scoping review, compared to other types of reviews, is to map out the “scope”
of a topic or domain of study to identify gaps and generate new research directions [48]. Typically, scoping reviews reveal the state ofaffairs and help determine whether a systematic review is possibleor necessary. Scoping reviews can also act as a way of solidifying
an emerging area of focus, which we believe to be true in the caseof kawaii computing. Our process is presented in Supplementary
Materials Figure 1. Notably, we deviated from the PRISMA-ScR by
not implementing those parts related to conventions in the medical field, e.g., structured abstracts. Our protocol was registered on
January 11th , 20241 . We provide our data set as part of the OpenScience initiative [54] here: https://bit.ly/kawaiicomputing.

2.1

Terms and Definitions

2.1.1 Kawaii. We restricted our focus to the Japanese conceptualization of “kawaii.” However, reports written in English by andabout Japanese people may translate kawaii as “cute” [59]. We
structured our search queries around this possibility by considering“cute” within the context of Japan or Japanese participants. During
screening, we carefully checked whether the authors or participants
were Japanese when “cute” rather than “kawaii” was used.
2.1.2 Kawaii Computing. We characterize “kawaii computing” as
all human-centred research on kawaii involving computer-based
agents, interfaces, environments, and systems. This broad definition
includes virtual characters, UI design patterns, machine learningtechniques to process human data, user reactions to chatbots, andso on. The guiding principle is of kawaii as a fundamental psychological phenomenon premised in Japanese culture and experienced
as emotion, cognitions, and/or behaviours by Japanese people, inline with the work of Nittono and colleagues [59].

2.2

Eligibility Criteria

We included research reports (short and long papers, conference
proceedings and journals, etc.) on kawaii computing (according
to the Japanese notion or “cute”) from 2000 to 2023. We excluded
non-human subjects research, researching not involving computerbased systems (not relevant to HCI), grey literature (unverifiable
quality or publication status), and papers not in English, Japaneseor Chinese languages (the languages known to the authors).

2.3

Information Sources and Search Strategy

We searched disciplinary databases relevant to HCI—the ACM Digital Library and IEEE Xplore–as well as Web of Science, a general
database to which we had access through our institution, for HCI
research or edge cases published outside of ACM and IEEE. We ran
our searches between January 3rd and 25th , 2024. Our basic query
structure was: kawaii OR (cute AND Japan) AND (human factors
computing OR human-computer interaction OR interaction design).
Full details for each database search query are presented in Table 1.
1 https://osf.io/g5knm

Wang and Seaborn

We used Zotero to store, remove duplicates, and count the downloaded records returned by these searches. Refer to Supplementary
Materials Figure 1 for counts at each stage.

2.4

Screening and Conflict Management

Two authors carried out two screening stages. The first involved
checking the title, abstract, and keywords for face viability. Thiswas done by the first author. The second author then checked the excluded records, re-including as needed. The second phase of screening involved both reading pertinent parts of the full texts with theaid of keyword searches to better determine viability. Importantly,
we expected to find one of the author’s own work returned. When
this occurred, screening, data extraction and synthesis of thesestudies was conducted by the other author.

2.5

Data Items and Data Extraction

We used Google Sheets to screen, extract data, and carry out analysis of the data. Specifically, we extracted the following: metadata,
including Authors, Year of publication, Title, Abstract, and URL;
Topic, specifically Topic of study and Context; Terms, including
Definition of kawaii, whether Explicit/implied, Citations for definitions/, and whether there was No mention of kawaii but fromthe Japanese context; Stimuli, including Stimuli details, the Measure of kawaii, and what Kawaii factors were identified; Methods,
including Type of research, Research design, Participant nationality, Demographics, Sample size, and Data Analysis; Agent Types,
including Virtual agents, Robots with a physical body, Interfaces,
and Other; and How was Kawaii used, including Design (Feature,
Control), User Reaction (Self-Reports, Biometrics), and Interpretive
Framework (Data Analysis, Machine Learning, Heuristic analysis).

2.6

Data Analysis

We carried out two data analyses. For quantitative data, we generated descriptive statistics, including counts and percentages. For
qualitative data, the first author used content analysis to categorizethe ”broad surface structure,” focusing on surface meanings rather
than latent interpretations, also called a ”manifest analysis” [4].

3

RESULTS

We identified 238 records through database searching. After screening and eligibility, 69 records were included (Supplementary Materials Figure 1). The full list of included papers is available athttps://bit.ly/kawaiicomputing

3.1

Kawaii in Topics and Contexts

We found seven contexts and a variety of topics in kawaii computing.
The most common context was HRI (n=29, 42%), followed by HCI(n=16, 23%) and HAI (n=15, 22%). Several papers covered machinelearning (ML) (n=4, 6%), human-machine interaction (HMI) (n=2,3%), culture (n=2, 3%) and human-human communication (n=1, 1%).
Although covering a wide array of topics, most papers only
referenced kawaii in participants’ open-ended answers and theauthors’ discussion. Less than half (n=31, 45%) included kawaii as amain topic. In HAI, models for kawaii virtual agents were proposed,e.g., Ohtsuka et al. [66] set up kawaii attributes for evaluating kawaii
virtual characters and Seaborn et al. [81] proposed a preliminary

Kawaii Computing

CHI EA ’24, May 11–16, 2024, Honolulu, HI, USA

Table 1: Search queries used in each data base and number of records returned.
Database

Query

Filters

Count

Date

ACM DL[[All: ”kawaii”] OR [All: ”cute in japan”]] AND [[All: ”computer”] OR [All:”computing”] OR [All: ”interactive design”] OR [ALL:”robot”]][[All: ”kawaii”] OR [[All: ”cute”] AND [All: ”japan”]]] AND [[All: ”human factors
computing”] OR [All: ”human-computer interaction”] OR [All: ”interaction
design”]][[All: ”kawaii”] OR [[All: ”cute”] AND [All: ”japan”]]] AND [[All: ”human factors
computing”] OR [All: ”human-computer interaction”] OR [All: ”interaction
design”]]((kawaii OR (cute AND Japan)) AND (human factors computing OR humancomputer interaction OR interaction design) )((kawaii OR (cute AND Japan)) AND (human factors computing OR humancomputer interaction OR interaction design) )(All Fields)/

432024.1.3

Research Article

146

2024.1.10

Abstract, Poster, Extended
Abstract, Short paper, Workin progress/38

2024.1.24

102024.1.10/

442024.1.10

IEEE Xplore
Web ofSciencemodel for kawaii game vocalics. Others evaluated user feelingsof kawaii-ness towards virtual characters [35, 74], 3D models ofanimals [90], VTubers [41], and preferences for kawaii and nonkawaii game characters [70]. In HRI, kawaii was framed as a featureof robot design, with the focus on identifying kawaii factors, e.g.,
NAO robot [69], 3D robots [38, 65], commercial delivery robots [15],virtual cross-cultural kawaii robots [6], and the design of Pepper’s
touch motion to express kawaii [67]. In HCI, kawaii was applied insocial media, e.g., Hashiguchi and Ogawa [22] proposed a kawaii
search engine for blogs, and Berque and Chiba [5] proposed andevaluated LINE’s kawaii chat interface. Kawaii was also introduced
to design other interfaces, such as the appearance of Kissenger (aremote communication device) [77], the LiveDeck interface for realtime collaborative editing [78], and a research through design (RtD)
critical analysis of the aesthetic object design fiction ”Menstruation
Machine” [3]. In ML, Sripian et al. [86] and Laohakangvalvit et al.
[38] developed framework to classify kawaii fashion with colourand clothing. Laohakangvalvit et al. [36] also proposed a model
to compare the kawaiiness of online images of cosmetic bottles.
Hohendanner et al. [24] explored the influence of culture-specificnarratives on the imagination of future AI technology, in whichkawaii is viewed as a specific feature of Japanese culture.

3.2

Distribution of Kawaii Computing Research

Since kawaii is a concept from Japan and directly tied to Japaneseculture, we considered participant demographics. Most studies included Japanese participants (n=56, 81%). Among these, 44 papers
included only Japanese participants (64%) and 12 included both
Japanese and participants from other countries (17%) and aimed atcross-cultural comparison or generalization. For example, Ohkura
et al. [65] compared kawaii robot designs by Japanese and U.S. students, and Laohakangvalvit et al. [35, 36] included both Japaneseand Thai participants to establish a framework for kawaii feeling
evaluations. Some papers did not include Japanese participants(7%). These papers introduced ”kawaii” into other culture contexts.
For example, Lu et al. [41] studied kawaii as a part of otaku culture, which influenced Chinese viewer perceptions and attitudes
towards live-stream VTubers. Patrick Rau et al. [69] also had a study
in Chinese context to investigate if kawaii design is valuable toChinese customers. The three papers about ML had no participants(6%). Other demographics used were gender, age, occupation, education, etc. Notably, most work included combinations of womenand men, except one paper for a new HMI interface for a straddletype vehicle design tested with men [87]. One paper investigatedthe effect of robotic mediation in promoting conversation amongolder adults for improving behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) and included only women [93]. Anotherwas about a system with kawaii (cute in Japan) icons for productretrieval and only tested women because the design was inspiredby the psychology of women’s shopping activity [33]. Many papers(n=17, 25%) focused on students, from junior high to college, andanother six (9%) focused on younger generations (under 30 years
old) [43, 52, 61, 76, 77, 91]. Four focused on kawaii computing for
older adults (7%), e.g., comparing perceptions of kawaii between theyoung and the old [69], a kawaii social robot for children-older adultinteraction [51], and conversational robots for a care center [72]and older adults with dementia [93]. Two (4%) conducted researchon children: a kawaii social robot mediating children-older adultinteraction [51], and delivering negative feedback for improving
the in-class learning experience [75].

3.3

Definition of Kawaii

More than a half papers (n=41, 65%) did not mention the word
”kawaii,” but we can infer that the use of ”cute” meant ”kawaii”
because of the Japanese context. We equate uses of ”cute” within
the Japanese context to the concept of kawaii. In 96 papers, 24 (35%)
used the definition of kawaii or cute in the Japanese context. 17(25%) provided an explicit definition (13 with citations, 4 withoutcitations), and nine (13%) provided an implicit definition (5 withcitations, 4 without citations). The citations were sourced fromcritical, cultural, and psychological studies.
For explicit definitions, most wrote that kawaii means Japanesecuteness, period. Ohkura et al. [65, abstract] defined kawaii as ”aJapanese adjective representing cute and adorable” [42, 57, 59, 62].
Seaborn et al. [80, 81] characterized kawaii as the Japanese conceptof ”cute++,” linked to cognition, behaviour, and emotion, citing
Nittono [55]. They also referenced impressions of cuteness, charm,
endearment, and pity. Similarly, Scissors et al. [78, p. 1126] explained that kawaii is ”an aspect of Japanese culture that refers
to cute things that evoke positive emotions and feelings of social

CHI EA ’24, May 11–16, 2024, Honolulu, HI, USA

affiliation,” also citing Nittono [55]. Some mentioned that kawaii
has positive connotations.Berque et al. [6] used the same definitionin their previous work [5] that described kawaii as Japanese cuteness, a concept ingrained in Japanese contemporary society. Theylooked into Japanese history and literature, which described kawaii
as pitiful, shameful, or too sad to see, small, weak, and someone
or something that gives one the feeling of “wanting to protect”[95]. Laohakangvalvit et al. [35, 36, 38] defined kawaii as a positive adjective that denotes such meanings as cute or lovable. They
state that it is critical as a kansei value plays a leading role in theworldwide success of Japanese products, such as Hello Kitty [34]and Pokémon [2]. Okada et al. [67] and Minakawa and Takada [45]defined kawaii as a Japanese word that has positive connotations
as cute [56, 59], which is employed when designing robot. Okada
et al. [67, p. 11276] position kawaii as is a critical factor in Japanesecommercial aspects and pop culture [31, 39].
Others provided a definition of kawaii in design. Hashiguchi andOgawa [22] linked kawaii with pretty or lovely design. Patrick Rau
et al. [69, 258] characterized kawaii as ”an affective concept rooted
in Japanese aesthetics”. For artificial products, they thought kawaii
is a critical factor of Japanese kansei design, which can mean cute,
lovely, small, and other related emotional values [63]. Dobrosovestnova et al. [15] described kawaii in the context of robot design.
Kawaii, an important concept in Japanese pop culture and design[67], has been operationalized in some studies in HRI [7], as not
only the perceivable features of robots, but also sociality and approach motivation [15, 58]. Mubin et al. [47] also described kawaii
in robot design as descriptive features that characterize a robot,
such as manga eyes and low resemblance to a human. Some related
kawaii with girlish. Sajadieh [74, p. 4] proposed that ”kawaii has
become an important component of aesthetics in Japanese consumer culture and has also spread to international markets andaudiences”, which became a popular way to describe female idols in
80s Japanese pop culture [85]. They also argued that kawaii inspired
the performance of cuteness, innocence, and femininity which contributes to the fetishization and commodification of a particular
type of culturally-desired gender dynamics: cute artificial womenand male consumers [8]. Bardzell et al. [3] described kawaii style
as Japanese cute girl aesthetic characterized by rainbow-coloredhair, glamour make-up and so on.
Implicit definitions of kawaii were introduced with reference toother studies or general knowledge, without author clarification.
Kawaii was described as am important part of otaku culture [41],by way of agents like Kewpie [24], which is one of the most universally recognized symbols of cuteness in Japan [71], attractive ina pretty or endearing way [30], an appearance similar to a stuffed
toy [68, 77], borderline before reaching the Uncanny Valley [11],and Harajuku street fashion as kawaii fashion [86]. Ohtsuka et al.
[66] and Sripian et al. [86] agreed that kawaii attracts attention as
an affective value. Sripian et al. [86] further mentioned there arevarious kawaii attributes for design, such as color [64].
We used word frequency analysis to analyze the 20 definitions
extracted. The top five frequency words (except kawaii) were ”Japanese” (n=27), ”cute” (n=13), ”cuteness” (n=9), ”culture” (n=8), ”positive” (n=6), ”pop” (n=5). ”Japan,” ”affective,” ”products,” and ”important” (n=4) followed. This indicates that the definition of kawaii is

Wang and Seaborn

highly related to a Japanese pop and consumer culture, is deemed
connected to ”cute,” and has positive meanings.

3.4

Kawaii Stimuli, Measurement, and Factors

We found six general stimuli: visual, audio, movements, gestures,and text. Most of studies focus on one stimuli (n=49, 71%). The mostcommon stimuli was visual (n=83, 87%), followed by movements(n=12, 17%), audio (n=8, 12%), gestures (n=2, 3%), text (n=1, 1%), andanimation (n=1, 1%). The specific stimuli for visual were various, e.g.,
virtual agents, robots, avatars, images, emotes, etc. The movement
stimuli were mainly robots with entities (n=8) followed by interfaces(n=2) [61, 68], virtual agents (n=2) [21, 76], and cars with eyes [21].
As for audio stimuli, the specific stimuli were game vocalics [81],robot [16, 29, 53], Hatsune Miku virtual character and TTS voice[74], and mucis vidio [3]. Specific stimuli of gestures were virtual
agent [44], and robots [27].
41 papers (59%) proposed measurements of kawaii (refer to Supplementary Table 1 for full details). Among them, six papers measured kawaiiness without discussing kawaii factors. On the other
hand, 15 papers discussed kawaii factors but did not provide or use
measurements of kawaii. Researchers considered a variety of kawaii
factors, but given the variety of the research, it is hard to summarize,
so we describe the kawaii factors that occurred most frequently in
our corpus. These were: physical features related to Baby Schema;
anthropomorphism, which is an important feature for non-living
things; and factors related to Japanese culture, such as animation,
girlishness, and colour. Berque et al. [6], Hatada et al. [23], Ohkura
et al. [65], Poeller et al. [70], Shiomi and Hagita [84], Yeh et al.
[94] deemed the physical features of size and shape as one of themost common factors, which is consistent with Baby Schema. They
found that a round shape [6, 94] and small size [23, 70] was perceived as more kawaii, because people felt less physical pressure
or stress [84]. Anthropomorphism was another common factor inrobot kawaiiness for visual but also audio stimuli [81, 83]. Humanlike robots, animal-like robots, and virtual agents [73, 75] weredeemed most kawaii. Animation and manga styling, which is asymbol of Japanese pop culture, were linked to greater levels of
kawaii [45, 47]. Femininity is another common factor related to highlevels of kawaiiness, especially girlishness [66, 74, 81]. Colour was
a common kawaii factor. Yeh et al. [94] found that people perceived
colourful drones as more kawaii. Berque et al. [6], Laohakangvalvit
et al. [37], Ohkura et al. [65], Patrick Rau et al. [69] found similar
colour factors and results linked to kawaiiness.

3.5

Use of Kawaii

Kawaii has been used in different ways in HCI and related areas.
We summarized how it has been approached in Table 2. Kawaii
has be applied in HCI research for design, UX measurement, andestablishment of an interpretive framework. In HCI design, kawaii
has been used as a feature that makes robots more acceptable topeople, especially social robots and interactive communication
agents. Instead of embedding kawaii features in design, Tsuji et al.
[90] controlled different levels of kawaii and compared these in 3Dmodels to find a better design. Another study directly included themeaning of kawaii using the Japanese word ”Puyo” in the productname to appeal to users [19]. Kawaii, which is related to emotions,Kawaii Computing

can act as a user reaction for UX evaluations. Furthermore, kawaii
has been included in interpretive frameworks. Laohakangvalvit
et al. [35] constructed a mathematical model of kawaii feelings,
while Laohakangvalvit et al. [36] proposed a machine learningmodel to evaluate kawaii attributes of kawaii products. Sajadieh[74] used heuristic analysis to study the kawaii impacts on virtual
agent design. Kawaii thus has versatility as a feature of design anda measurable user reaction or experience.

4

DISCUSSION

With the global spread of kawaii and Japanese culture, attention
to the notion of ”cute” as a cultural facet of Japan is on the rise.
Kawaii research and design practice is also steadily increasing.
When it comes to HCI and related fields, how do we ride this trend?
Although existing studies were not exhaustive, they do provide
inspiration and directions for future work.

4.1

Kawaii vs. CuteThe review of kawaii allows us to have an understanding of thedifferences between kawaii and cute. Compared to cute, kawaii
embodies a particular Japanese aesthetic and culture frame [5, 37,
41, 74, 78]. It goes beyond just being cute, as cute does not haveany cultural connotations. Cute works in HCI typically applies the”Baby Schema” concept defined by Lorenz in 1943 [40] to guidethe creation of interactive artefacts [17]. Kawaii, however, is not
limited to being a Baby Schema phenomenon, nor is it simply afeature of design [57]. Nittono [56] proposed a two-layer modelof kawaii, with one layer as emotion and the other layer as social
value. The kawaii as an emotion frame presents kawaii as a stimulus
perceived as cute, friendly, harmless, pretty and so on, regardlessof whether the stimulus is a living being. When kawaii affect isevaluated as significant through cognitive appraisal processes, it
can be linked to a psychological state of kawaii [56]. Kawaii is also
framed as social value, referring to kawaii as a medium of sociality[56]. This has be adopted in many kawaii works as well as in HCI(e.g., [6, 65, 67, 78, 81]). A more latent feature of kawaii is its basis
in Japanese culture. Nittono [57] notes that features particular to
Japanese culture appear to influence and temper the concept ofkawaii, such as amae, one’s drive for acceptance and adorationfrom other people, and chizimi shikou, the love of small things. We
found no specific reference to these yet.
Research in kawaii computing is not the same topically as research on cute design based on Baby Schema in HCI. Kawaii is not
only the feature of the design of a robot, virtual agent, or interface,but also emotion that occurs in the interaction between humanagent, human-robot, and human-interface (and perhaps between
people with a facilitating computer). We propose that kawaii computing provides an approach to improve the relationship between
people and technologies. Moreover, kawaii may vary in different
social contexts, especially different culture. For example, a robot
may become kawaii when it interacts with your pet [29]. Although
work is limited (17%), some cross-cultural research has found thatJapanese people are more sensitive and connected to kawaii computing [6, 24, 35, 78]. As expected, most kawaii computing work
was done by Japanese researchers and included Japanese subjects

CHI EA ’24, May 11–16, 2024, Honolulu, HI, USA(81%). Still, kawaii as a psychological state of feeling positive emotions [56] is not limited in Japan. This shows a gap in cross-cultural
kawaii design and user perceptions of kawaii towards robots, agents,
interfaces, and so on.

4.2

An Emerging Map of Kawaii Computing

Kawaii was found across HCI and adjacent contexts, with workin design (51%), user reactions (75%), and interpretive frameworks(13%). This indicates that kawaii can play several different roles
in research and design. Most work studied user reactions throughparticipants’ kawaii emotions. There was limited work on kawaii
data analysis frameworks [35], ML structures for kawaii evaluation[37, 66, 86], and heuristic analysis [22, 86]. However, even muchwork covered kawaii user reactions, there was no universal framework for kawaii measurement. Most researchers created their own
scales [10, 47, 50, 66, 76, 81, 87], some employed (un/validated) items
from other kawaii works [56, 57] in psychological and behaviouralfields [52, 67, 90], and two used the objective measurement of biometrics [65, 69]. Many (28%) studied kawaii both as a feature ofdesign and as a user reaction, which is consistent with the twofactor model of kawaii: not only features but also kawaii emotions in
the interaction. Kawaii attributes of design were various within andacross agents, robots, and interfaces [21, 37, 45, 47, 83, 94], which issimilar to the situation of kawaii measures. This shows a need forresearchers to establish a validated frameworks for understanding
the components of kawaii computing.

4.3

An Agenda for Future Work

Based on this scoping review, we offer some ideas and prompts for
future work on kawaii computing.
• Standardization: Devise a taxonomy of attributes (stimulus design) and standard measures (user response) for
kawaii computing. In HCI and related domains, kawaii
attributes across agents, robots, and interface designs as wellas measures of evaluating kawaii are fragmented. Most reliedon (unvalidated) self-designed materials based on the specificcontext. Establishing sets of attributes for kawaii computing
and interpretive frameworks for evaluating kawaii reactionsin HCI, HRI, and HAI will be a key endeavour.
• Multiple Modalities: Explore kawaii computing withstimuli beyond the visual. The body of work covered inthis review indicates a focus on visual stimuli. While only
a few works involved other stimuli, such as audio [80, 81],HCI is not always visually based, and sometimes uses only
non-visual modalities, e.g., voice assistants.
• Cultural Significance: Adapt kawaii cross-culturally.
”Kawaii” is defined by and has a reciprocal relationship withJapanese culture. Most research has been conducted in Japanor by Japanese people. However, the power of kawaii may
not only be limited to the Japanese context. Future work canstudy the cross-cultural effects on and differences in kawaii
perceptions and experiences. For example, comparisons ofJapanese and non-Japanese foreigners living in Japan, or
comparisons of kawaii computing artefacts and computing
artefacts designed to be cute in non-Japanese contexts.

CHI EA ’24, May 11–16, 2024, Honolulu, HI, USA

Wang and Seaborn

Table 2: Summary of how kawaii has been approached in HCI and adjacent domains.
Components

Details

PapersCount (%)

DesignFeature[3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 15, 16, 20, 24, 30, 35–38, 44, 45, 47, 49, 51–53, 60, 61, 65, 66,
68, 69, 74, 77, 78, 80, 86, 94]
[90]
[19]

34 (49%)Control
Name
User
ReactionInterpretive
Framework

Self-reports
Biometrics[1, 3, 6, 10, 12, 14, 15, 18, 21–23, 25–29, 32, 33, 35, 38, 41, 43, 46, 47, 50,
52, 53, 60, 61, 65–67, 69, 70, 72, 73, 75, 76, 78, 80–83, 87, 88, 90–94][35, 65]

2 (3%)

Data Analysis
Machine Learning (ML)
Heuristic Analysis[35][13, 24, 36, 37, 66, 86][22, 74]

1 (1%)
6 (9%)
2 (3%)• Sociality: Evaluate the social impacts of kawaii computing platforms. Sociality refers to social interactions
between users and agents and social reactions to kawaii
stimuli. We may also need to explore the impact on society
when it comes to kawaii computing platforms deployed atscale. Future work should explore how the social plays out
so as to understand the social impacts of kawaii computing.
• Adjacent Concepts: Explore the theorized relevance ofother aspects of Japanese culture connected to kawaii,such as amae and chizimi shikou. Amae may also relate
to sociality. Could kawaii chatbots make us feel loved andaccepted? Chizimi shikou could help explain preferences tosmall devices and robots.

5

1 (1%)
1 (1%)

CONCLUSION

Kawaii computing is nascent. While not exactly new, the lack offormalization around what it is leaves this area of study brimmingwith possibility. Researchers and designers across HCI, HRI, HAI,and beyond should draw from the formal theories and models
established in psychology. We have the opportunity now to buildon this foundation and direct the future of kawaii computing in amore rigorous, culturally-sensitive, and theoretically-driven way.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Yijia Wang is grateful to the China Government Scholarship thatsponsored this work as part of her doctoral programme. Katie
Seaborn conscientiously dissents to in-person participation at CHI;
read their positionality statement here: https://bit.ly/chi24statement

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