A number of research findings indicate that messages displayed to the human operator generally affect the emotion of the operator, which in turn influences the operator's performance in handling a given situation. One of the various challenges students face during programming courses is to diagnose and respond to syntax errors. In most programming languages, compilers or interpreters are the ones that generate the syntax errors. However, the ways the errors were presented mostly resulted in frustration and discouragement, especially for novice programmers. The purpose of this presentation is to explore and propose ways to incorporate low level emotional design elements as part of compiler's feedback to enhance a positive affect, which in turn promotes creative thinking to improve the programmers' performance.
