TeleSense



Conclusion: Design knowledge for future study




︎Design for mediated touch communication

  • Soft and warm fluid is comprising application for mediated affective communication
  • Active touch could reduce the intrusiveness
  • Touch and being touched both could generate pleasantness
  • Ambiguous information could enhance communication experiences
  • Mediated touch may be open for various relationships under the unintimate design


︎Design for asynchronous communication

  • With time gap of communication, interaction should be able to be picked up
  • Real-time channel is supposed to remain in asynchronous channel 
  • Touch and being touched both could generate pleasantness
  • Mediated touch may be open for various relationships under the unintimate design



Discussion


Affection in ambiguity: Screen is gone, Time is unknown


In this communication channel, communication is situated in an ambiguous context for people in close relationship but live apart. The ambiguity is created by abstract meanings in touch message, and unknown time points from asynchronous channel. Besides, instead of reading but touching to communicate, information is transferred from visible to perceptible, creating a context that screen, which affords the massive visible information, is gone. Which is a meaningful topic for discussion in this age where the communication technology is pervasive, I proposed a few open questions below.



︎ Open questions
  1. How to apply ambiguity to enhance the affection for remote lovers in mediated communication?
  2. What will be meaningful mediated communication for remote lover?
  3. How to design a meaningful communication experience for remote lovers?
  4. What will be meaningful information given by mediated communication tools?
  5. When the digital device plays the presence of the remote lover, how to design the affective mediated communication experience to build a healthy human-technology relation?


︎Reflection on research Journey
  1. First person perspective helps with understanding and defining the real problems, digging out the problems which are hard to reveal in the massive user research
  2. Self-observation requires continuous documenting, the tool to help self-observation for HCI researcher could be developed in the future study
  3. Self-observation also needs the interaction with others, inviting users are necessary for auto-ethnographic design method
  4. Putting self in the HCI researcher, helps to reflect on the relation of technology and human
  5. Tinkering helps with thinking in the designing process to form a pragmatic solution



︎Closing words



Technology is the best when
it brings people together,

to and in,
the physical world.