2017
Samarth Singhal, Carman Neustaedter, Yee Loong Ooi, Alissa N. Antle, Brendan Matkin. 2017. Flex-N-Feel: The Design and Evaluation of Emotive Gloves for Couples to Support Touch Over Distance Proceedings Article . In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, CSCW '17 Association for Computing Machinery, Portland, Oregon, USA, 98–110, .
Abstract | BibTeX | Tags: gloves, haptic, intimacy, long distance relationships, tangible, touch, vibrotactile, wearable
@inproceedings{10.1145/2998181.2998247,
title = {Flex-N-Feel: The Design and Evaluation of Emotive Gloves for Couples to Support Touch Over Distance},
author = {Samarth Singhal and Carman Neustaedter and Yee Loong Ooi and Alissa N. Antle and Brendan Matkin},
url = {https://doi-org.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/10.1145/2998181.2998247},
doi = {10.1145/2998181.2998247},
isbn = {9781450343350},
year = {2017},
date = {2017-01-01},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing},
pages = {98–110},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {Portland, Oregon, USA},
series = {CSCW '17},
abstract = {Many couples live apart due to work, educational situations, or frequent travel. While technology can help mediate these relationships, there is a lack of designs that allow couples to share a sense of touch over distance. We present a design case study of a tangible communication system called Flex- N-Feel--a pair of gloves that allows distance-separated couples to feel the flexing of their remote partners' fingers through vibrotactile sensations on their skin. We evaluated our design with nine couples where the system was augmented with either a Skype audio call or a video connection. Our study showed that participants enjoyed their conversation more with the gloves, felt more emotionally connected, and experienced intimate moments together. Couples used the glove for shared actions, playful episodes, intimate touches, and to simply feel each other's presence. Video was important to aid couples in understanding each other's actions. Our results illustrate that designs focusing on physical touch over distance should be open to appropriation such that they can augment existing communication routines and technologies.},
keywords = {gloves, haptic, intimacy, long distance relationships, tangible, touch, vibrotactile, wearable},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inproceedings}
}
Many couples live apart due to work, educational situations, or frequent travel. While technology can help mediate these relationships, there is a lack of designs that allow couples to share a sense of touch over distance. We present a design case study of a tangible communication system called Flex- N-Feel--a pair of gloves that allows distance-separated couples to feel the flexing of their remote partners' fingers through vibrotactile sensations on their skin. We evaluated our design with nine couples where the system was augmented with either a Skype audio call or a video connection. Our study showed that participants enjoyed their conversation more with the gloves, felt more emotionally connected, and experienced intimate moments together. Couples used the glove for shared actions, playful episodes, intimate touches, and to simply feel each other's presence. Video was important to aid couples in understanding each other's actions. Our results illustrate that designs focusing on physical touch over distance should be open to appropriation such that they can augment existing communication routines and technologies.