I have always been extremely passionate about the emotional interaction between people and things. My industrial design background has driven my interest in the effect of experiencing objects in a particularly emotional hands-on way. This may range from the satisfaction of creating a useful and meaningful object from a flat lifeless box, to the excitement of watching your presence bring life to a robot. I believe that emotion drives the true meaning of experience. This flash point of emotion between interaction and meaning is where I want to invest my life's work. I have newly found a place for this passion in the world of HCI and affective computing. As I meld my industrial design background with HCI I hope explore and define how affect not only keeps people more interested and engaged with computers and robots, but how it makes them more likely to understand and empathize with their tasks and needs.