Designing consensual mediated social touch interactions

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to advocate the consideration of consent and non-intrusiveness when designing Social Touch Technology (STT) – technology that allows people to touch each other remotely. Although STT is already available on the market, there are no standards to ensure consent in such technologymediated social touch. The paper is intended primarily for researchers and designers working on STT, but also addresses a broader audience of potential users.
Design/methodology/approach - The authors’ follow value-sensitive design approach. They conducted a conceptual investigation, followed by an empirical investigation, where they relied on ethnographic research and two focus groups to elicit information about potentially intrusive situations for STT users. They further engaged in technical investigation and developed three intrusiveness-mitigating protocols, implemented them in a pair of haptic sleeves and assessed their effectiveness in a user study.
Findings - The findings indicated varying levels of success among the tested protocols in reducing perceived intrusiveness. Users reported all of the protocols to be helpful to some degree and emphasized the need for customizable solutions instead of fixed protocols.
Originality/value - They propose a typology of situations where technology-mediated social touch can be intrusive and non-desirable. They further demonstrate that intrusiveness-mitigating protocols can be built into STT and that they are effective. They propose directions for further development of these protocols and non-intrusive STT design.