The BRUMS method and emotional design: profile of the mood states of undergraduate students in higher education

Abstract

The comprehension of the human being in its extent, including the emotions, moods, the promotion of pleasure and the efficiency of the objective proposed by a product or service, are points of analysis of design, mainly of emotional design and positive design. In the academic universe, emotions interfere with learning. The BRUMS self-report tool uses a unipolar scale to assess six subscales of mood swings (vigor, tension, anger, depression, mental confusion, and fatigue). Therefore, the possibility of using this tool in higher education was seen, contemplating students, graduated students and teachers, and therefore understand if there are variations in moods between the groups analyzed. In total, 256 students, 81 former students and 47 teachers participated in the survey. The survey was applied in November, in the final stage of the academic semester, before the last annual exams. The main result was the presence of the moods ‘fatigue’, ‘vigor’ and ‘tension’. It was noticed that some parameters of experiences interfere with the mood perception, such as the person’s time before the service or previous experiences. Finally, the BRUMS methodology satisfactorily measured the moods of those involved, corroborating it as a good self-report tool for understanding the user from the emotional design and positive design perspective, but leaving something to be desired in further analysis.