Communicating Socio-Emotional Sentiment Through Haptic Messages

Auteur-es

Xi Laura Cang, Ali Israr

Nombre Auteurs

2

Titre

Communicating Socio-Emotional Sentiment Through Haptic Messages

Année de publication

2020

Référence (APA)

Cang, X. L., & Israr, A. (2020). Communicating Socio-Emotional Sentiment Through Haptic Messages.

résumé

Touch plays an important social role in fostering and maintaining emotional communication in vital human relationships, but when close relations live apart for extended periods of time, this nonverbal channel is lost. We explore how a custom-built, low degree-of-freedom, wearable haptic display may mediate the encoding and decoding of a set of complex socio-emotional messages that is sent and received by strangers, intimate partners, and even the same individual a week later.

URL

https://research.facebook.com/file/985449752308807/Communicating-Socio-Emotional-Sentiment-Through-Haptic-Messages.pdf

Accessibilité de l'article

Libre

Champ

AR/VR, Human Computer Interaction & UX

Type contenu (théorique Applicative méthodologique)

Méthodologique

Méthode

The method involved building a custom wearable haptic display and conducting a small pilot study with dyad pairs to ensure that haptic patterns were discernible. Participants were given a set of 10 emotion-centric scenarios and one that they created, and used a touchscreen control interface to convert it into a haptic sensation. They then decoded the designs to test interpretation accuracy.

Cas d'usage

N/A

Objectifs de l'article

The objectives of the article are to explore the importance of touch in fostering emotional communication, to demonstrate how a wearable haptic display can mediate the encoding and decoding of complex socio-emotional messages, and to investigate the accuracy of interpretation of haptic messages.

Question(s) de recherche/Hypothèses/conclusion

The research questions are : 1) What messages do people wish to convey in an LDR? (Message Definition and Selection) 2) How might people design haptic sensations to communicate these messages? (Message Generation) 3) Can recipients of these haptic messages decode the complex root emotions? (Message Interpretation)

The hypothesis is that haptic messages designed to convey anger will be more consistently recognized than those designed to convey calmness, and that messages designed by a close partner will be more accurately interpreted than those designed by a stranger or the participant themselves.

The conclusions are that haptic messages can be accurately interpreted based on the embedded emotion and relation-distance of the message designer, and that a wearable haptic display has potential for facilitating emotional communication in long-distance relationships.

Cadre théorique/Auteur.es

The theoretical framework of the article includes research on the importance of touch in emotional communication, as well as studies on haptic technology and its potential for communication. The main authors cited include Kuchenbecker, Culbertson, and Okamura.

Concepts clés

Haptic communication, Relationships, Emotion, Touch Wearable technology.

Données collectées (type source)

The type of data collected was qualitative, and the sources were the participants' designs of haptic messages, descriptions of emotions "evoked when experiencing the message", and their interpretation of the unprompted message designed by the partner.

Définition des émotions

Non

Ampleur expérimentation (volume de comptes)

20 participants in 10 pairs

Technologies associées

Custom-built wearable haptic display

Mention de l'éthique

Non

Finalité communicationnelle

We are excited to demonstrate the viability of haptics in machine-mediated communication as a vehicle for conveying the important but subtly nuanced emotional content that we project so naturally in person.