Love in Lyrics: An Exploration of Supporting Textual Manifestation of Affection in Social Messaging
Abstract
Affectionate communication, the conveyance of closeness, care, and fondness for another, plays a key role in romantic relationships. While the pervasive use of digital technology for communication limits affectionate interaction through nonverbal cues -- a major channel of expression in face-to-face settings, there have been few approaches which scaffold couples' romantic text conversations. To bridge this gap, we propose a novel interactive system Lily which gives users inspirations to enrich their romantic expressions in text messaging. It first listens to users' original input and then recommends romantic lyrics holding the closest meaning in real-time during chats with partners. After a three-day empirical study, participants who are real-life couples reported that they not only received useful cues from Lily in terms of how to polish their affectionate expressions, but also learnt to enrich the conversation with topics enlightened by its recommendations. Based on our findings, we finally provide several design considerations for actual deployment of such an application.
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In the Personal context, planning and translating support are intermingled due to the frequent use of longer AI outputs that directly ideate and write for the user, though these are generally presented as suggestions in order to preserve the user's engagement with the text.
“Planning and translating support are intermingled due to the frequent use of longer AI outputs that directly ideate and write for the user, though these are generally presented as suggestions in order to preserve the user's engagement with the text [15,65].”
From Co-Writing with AI, on Human Terms: Aligning Research with User Demands Across the Writing Process (2025) · cites this paper as [65]
In the Personal context, there is transformation of user inputs between modalities like speech to text or visuals to text, or between textual forms like keywords to prose.
“We also see transformation of user inputs between modalities like speech to text or visuals to text [79,144], or between textual forms like keywords to prose [65].”
From Co-Writing with AI, on Human Terms: Aligning Research with User Demands Across the Writing Process (2025) · cites this paper as [65]
Cites
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“Some other studies indicate that novel stimuli provoke passion in long-term relationships [4, 34].”
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TaleBrush: Sketching Stories with Generative Pretrained Language Models
Chung, J. J. Y., Kim, W., Yoo, K. M., Lee, H., Adar, E., & Chang, M. (2022) · CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3491102.3501819 · Cited by 206 · see citing works
A Design Space for Intelligent and Interactive Writing Assistants
Lee, M., Gero, K. I., Chung, J. J. Y., Shum, S. B., Raheja, V., Shen, H., Venugopalan, S., Wambsganss, T., Zhou, D., Alghamdi, E. A., et al. (2024) · Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3613904.3642697 · Cited by 136 · see citing works
Co-Writing with AI, on Human Terms: Aligning Research with User Demands Across the Writing Process
Reza, M., Thomas-Mitchell, J., Dushniku, P., Laundry, N., Williams, J. J., & Kuzminykh, A. (2025) · Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · doi:10.1145/3757566 · Cited by 37 · see citing works
- Authors
- Kim, T., Lee, J. S., Peng, Z., & Ma, X.
- Affiliations
- Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HK)
- Korea University (KR)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
- Published
- 2019-11-07
- Volume
- 3
- Issue
- CSCW
- Pages
- 1-27
- ISSN
- 2573-0142 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3026519521
- Cited by
- 24
- References
- 6
- Citations by year
- 2025: 8 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 1
- FWCI
- 2.84
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (publishedVersion)
- Rare & Special e-Zone (The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region China (C6030-18G)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Innovative Human-Technology Interaction
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Attachment and Relationship Dynamics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Recommender Systems and Techniques
- Keywords
- romantic relationships, affectionate communication, text messaging, Romantic lyric, real-time recommendation, couples communication, nonverbal cues, digital communication, design considerations
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