- The document discusses developing a vocabulary or framework for describing the aesthetics and qualities of touch to support designers in critiquing and designing for experiences involving touch. - Existing languages for other senses like taste, smell, vision and sound are mentioned to provide context. However, there is currently no established language for describing the qualities of touch. - Developing such a vocabulary could help make discussions about haptic qualities in design more explicit and defendable, rather than relying solely on tacit and subjective understandings. - The proposed outputs include a framework that designers could use to critique the role of touch in experience design. - Developing the vocabulary will involve literature

1. The Aesthetics of Touch
Vicky Teinaki
Full time doctoral student, year 1
Northumbria University School of Design
Peer Review
2nd June 2011

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NZ Mouldmakers Report The Hothouse
The Hothouse 2006-8
Graphic Design Graphic Design/Flash Animation
Design Researcher An ongoing project over three months, the process began with making diagrams
suitable for presentations and culminated in a library of symbols and Flash
The Hothouse/Unitec New Zealand presentation.

5. Tactile Technologies 2008
Master of Design
Unitec New Zealand

6. Interaction Designer 2008-10
Design, IA, front-end development
Locus Research

7. Writing/editing
in the interaction
design community

8. Common threads

9. Common threads

10. An Aesthetics of Touch

11. An Aesthetics of Touch
The Qualities of Haptics for Experience Design
This research will help support designers to critique the qualities
of touch in the service of designing for experience, by compiling a
vocabulary for haptic aesthetic qualities.
Outputs
A framework for designers to use to critique touch.

12. PhD Timeline — Vicky Teinaki
01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39
Stagegates IPA Year 2 Writeup Viva
Literature Review
Parallel Fields
Existing Languages
Use of Touch in Design
Pilot Studies
Revea/expert interviews
Design Probes/Languages
Identify /pilot
methodologies
Writeup of methodology
Collate proposed
vocabulary
Data collection
Workshops with designers
Situate in design process
Valorising proposed
frameworks
Writeup
here there be dragons

13. Why?

15. ”We know more than we can tell“
—Polanyi (1947)

16. ”We know more than we can tell“
—Polanyi (1947)
”Criticism improves our perception“
—Barzell (2011)

17. User Experience Making an explicit haptic language
available for design
communication (rather than tacit
+ inpenetrable/indefensible) …
DESIGN & Product Interaction
EMOTION
Semantics Aesthetics of
Design
Play/fun
interaction Storytelling
Product
Immaterial
Personality Interface Aesthetics
Bertelsen et al (2004)
(gesture,
Meaning movement)
Materiality
Somaesthetics
HAPTIC
Hara et al (2007)
Critter Materials Library
Regier (2005) (2010)
Soft(n) Emotional Dimensions
HAPTICS Schiphorst (2007) Museumopathy
Chaterjee (2010)
HAPTIC
(Dagman, 2010)
Hara et al (2007)
Embodiment
Phenomenology
McCarty & Wallace Consumer
Phenomena
(2006)
Skill, tacit Psychology
Experience knowledge Language for Touch
Motamedi (2008)
prototyping etc. Aroma Wheel
Language for Touch Sensory Noble (1981)
Motamedi (2008)
languages Flabour Wheels
(e.g. coffee, food)
Affective Loop
Sundstrom (2010) Vocabulary Design Methods
COMMUNICATION Kansei
Diamond model (Qiren)
Onion model
Engineering
Iceberg model (Qiren)
… understanding that this will
Sensual Evaluation
Instrument (2010)
Framework (?) not be prescriptive
Vicky Teinaki
The Vocabulary of Touch | Yr1 PhD University of Northumbria
04 February 2011

18. Wine Graphic Design Experience Design
Language of taste/ Language of vision Language of touch?
smell
Also Music (language of sound), perfume (language of smell)

19. The “fixed vocabulary issue”

20. Kansei Engineering = quantifying the senses
Product language is often prescriptive/top down
Others focus on material selection (e.g. Karana et al)

21. Nostalgia
Personal/Reminiscence
Meaning Making
Tactile to access truths ascertainable only through touch and to verify what is seen (Clasen)
Visual as a means of aesthetic appreciations (Clasen)
Impersonal/Educational Museological to experience the rare and the museum-worthy (Clasen)
Learning as a scientific method (Clasen)
Imaginative/Creative to facilitate an intimate and imaginative experience (Clasen)
Chatterjee et.al. (2009) on aspects of museumopathy

22. The Language of Taste/Smell
Wine Tasting
Lehrer’s Wine and
Conversation (1989)
suggests that metaphors can
jump genres, and that expert
words help amateurs.

23. Next Steps

24. Video interviews of experts/designers — semantic analysis
Also pilot with selected students from Reveal

25. There are methods of coding/understanding touch
adapted from Lederman and Klatsky (1985)

26. Probes of touch critique
Suggestions include sentences, visuals, objects.