Preliminary Investigation of Across-Body Vibrotactile Pattern for the Design of Affective Furniture

Abstract

This research is an exploratory work aimed at evaluating the ability of across-body vibration patterns to communicate emotions. We developed an affective haptic chair that allows seated users to feel tactile sensation around the upper and lower back, bottom, and leg area. We tested the system in two studies. The first study used 25 user-generated haptic patterns to represent five basic emotions, and suggested that across-body haptic patterns are effective in conveying emotions. In the second study, we tested four basic directional patterns identified in study 1 and validated the effect of up, down, left, and right movement on users’ emotional states. We observed an improvement in valence value from "up" movement, while the "down" movement was expressed to induce a sense of calmness in users. These findings could be useful in designing future affective furniture.