Interdisciplinary Insights for Digital Touch Communication

Communication is increasingly moving beyond ‘ways of seeing’ to ‘ways of feeling’. This Open Access book provides social design insights and implications for HCI research and design exploring digitally mediated touch communication.  It offers a socially orientated map to help navigate the complex social landscape of digitally mediated touch for communication: from everyday touch-screens, tangibles, wearables, haptics for virtual reality, to the tactile internet of skin.   

Drawing on literature reviews, new case-study vignettes, and exemplars of digital touch, the book examines the major social debates provoked by digital touch, and investigates social themes central to the communicative potential and societal consequences of digital touch:

·        Communication environments, capacities and practices

·        Norms associations and expectations

·        Presence, absence and connection

·        Social imaginaries of digital touch

·        Digital touch ethics and values

The book concludes with a discussion of the significance of social understanding and methods in the context of Interdisciplinary collaborations to explore touch, towards the design of digital touch communication, ‘ways of feeling’, that are useable, appropriate, ethical and socially aware.

Introduction Digital Touch Communication.- Introduction.- Touch matters.- Digital Touch.- Situating this Book: A Social Revaluing of the Sensory and Multimodal.- InTouch Digital Touch Communication.- Overview of the Book.- In-Touch Case Studies.- In Touch with Baby.- The Art of Remote Contact.- Tactile Emoticon.- Designing Digital Touch.- Virtual Touch.- Interdisciplinary Collaborations to Explore Touch.- Introduction.- Interdisciplinary Dialogues of Digital Touch Communication.- Prototyping.- Conclusion.- The landscape of digital touch communication.- Introduction.- Affective and Social Robot Touch.- Human-Object Touch Communication.- Object/Textile Handling.- Education and Training.- Disability and Rehabilitation.- Conclusion.- Social Normsof Touch.- Introduction.- Technology and Changing Social Norms.- Digital Touch and Social Norms.- Touching the body.- Digital Touching.- Conclusion.- Touch presence, absence and connection.- Introduction.- Tactile Emoticon.- Beyond the Interface.- Remote Contact.- Touch Connection as a Bodily Way of Knowing.- In Touch with Baby.- Conclusion.- Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Digital Touch.- Introduction.- The Sociotechnical Imaginary as a Design Resource.- Body.- Time.- Place and Spatiality.- New Methodological Routes to Imagining Digital Touch Futures Conclusion.- Digital Touch Ethics and Values.- Introduction.- What is Ethical Touch?.- Touch, Body and ‘Machine’.- A Note on Study.-  Ethics.- Conclusion.- Closing Thoughts, Insights and Research and Design Resources for Digital Touch Communication.- A Social Perspective on Digital Touch.- Insights for digital touch communication.- Social Norms and Digital Touch.- Touch Connections.- Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Digital Touch The Ethics of Touch.- Methodologies for Digital Touch.- An Emergent Research and Design Framework for Digital Touch Communication.