Design of a wearable research tool for warm mediated social touches

Social touches are essential in interpersonal communication, for instance to show affect. Despite this importance, mediated interpersonal communication oftentimes lacks the possibility to touch. A human touch is a complex composition of several physical qualities and parameters, but different haptic technologies allow us to isolate such parameters and to investigate their opportunities and limitations for affective communication devices. In our research, we focus on the role that temperature may play in affective mediated communication. In the current paper, we describe the design of a wearable `research tool' that will facilitate systematic research on the possibilities of temperature in affective communication. We present use cases, and define a list of requirements accordingly. Based on a requirement fulfillment analysis, we conclude that our research tool can be of value for research on new forms of affective mediated communication.