Mediated Social Touching: Haptic Feedback Affects Social Experience of Touch Initiators

Author

Martin Maunsbach, Kasper Hornbæk, Hasti Seif, WHC 2023

Keywords

haptics, virtual reality, human-computer interaction, mediated social touch, remote interaction, ultrasound mid-air haptics

WHAT

  • Social experience of touch initiator: the impact of sensation of remote touch on skin on the social experience including friendliness between actors and the feeling of co-presence. How does haptic feedback alone affect the social experience of the touch initiator?

WHY

  • Social touch interactions can increase people’s well-being and attachment, change their behavior, and communicate affect

  • Remote communication lacks social touch

  • Most of the studies focus on either evaluating the user experience (UX) of an MST prototype, or the social experience of the person being touched

HOW

  • Design

    • 3 tasks with distinct haptic feed condition

    • Order counterbalance

    • Interview

  • Apparatus

    • HTC VIVE Pro head-mounted display (HMD)

    • OptiTrack

    • the Ultrahaptics STRATOS Explore ultrasound haptic device

  • Participants

    • recruited by advertising on the university mailing lists and social media channels.

  • Virtual Environment

    • Showing a virtual table and an avatar representing a remote person

    • Microsoft Rocketbox Avatar Library

  • Haptic feedback

    • No haptics - control condition

    • Mid-air - Ultrasound device

    • Passive - A silicone hand to represent the the shape and elasticity of a human hand

  • Mediate deception

    • Participants are informed that a remote person was receiving their touch

  • Procedure

    • choose their avatar’s skin texture from six skin texture resources

    • the stroke should last three seconds from the wrist to the tip of the middle finger

    • Participants stroked for 20 seconds twice, with one haptic feedback condition at a time, with VR HMD and headphone.

    • Interview - self-evaluation and open-ended questions

Results

  • Quantitative Ratings and Movement Velocity

    • Pleasantness

      • ANOVA showed a significant effect of haptic condition on Pleasantness

      • 13 participants - Mid-Air condition

      • 6 participants - Passive condition

      • 5 participants - No haptics condition

    • Friendliness

      • no main effect on Friendliness

    • Co-presence

      • ANOVA showed a significant effect of the haptic condition on Co-presence

      • 16 participants - Passive condition

      • 8 participants - Mid-Air condition

      • 5 participants - No haptics condition

    • Velocity

      • ANOVA showed a significant effect of haptic feedback on Velocity

      • Stroking in the Passive condition was significantly slower than the No Haptics condition, and the Mid-Air condition

  • Qualitative Responses

    • Q1. How does the interaction compare to stroking a real hand?

    • Q2. How do you think the stroking is felt by the remote person?

    • Q3. How do you think your stroking affected the remote person’s perception of you?

    • Q4. After trying these examples, what do you think touching a virtual hand should feel like?

Discussion

  • Materiality

  • Reciprocity

  • Limitations

    • Facial expressions and reciprocating their touch actions

    • use only stroking

    • the ethics of remote social touch