Active and Passive Mediated Social Touch with Vibrotactile Stimuli in Mobile Communication

Abstract

Tactile technology in mobile devices makes mediated social touch (MST) a possibility. MST with vibrotactile stimuli can be applied in future online social communication applications. There may be different gestures to trigger vibrotactile stimuli for senders and receivers. In this study, we compared senders with gestures and receivers without gestures to identify the differences in perceiving MST with vibrotactile stimuli. We conducted a user study to explore differences in the likelihood to be understood as a social touch with vibrotactile stimuli between senders and receivers. The results showed that for most MST, when participants acted as senders and receivers, there were no differences in understanding MST with vibrotactile stimuli when actively perceiving with gestures or passively perceiving without gestures. Researchers or designers could apply the same vibrotactile stimuli for senders’ and the receivers’ phones in future designs.