The Impact of Affective Haptic Design of Wearable Devices on Persian Users

Abstract

Evidence indicates haptic stimulation can effectively evoke emotions and can be utilized in communication technologies’ design. Due to the impact of culture on people’s tactile behaviours and lack of research in West Asian cultures, this study aims to investigate the impact of affective haptics in Persian users. Using a wearable prototype, a test is conducted on 78 users to evaluate the arousal and valence level of their 4 emotions (anger, happiness, relaxed and sadness) when exposed to text messages with and without haptic stimulation and to see if they can recognise the stimuli with given haptic patterns. A semi-focused interview is also done to evaluate the results further with qualitative feedbacks. Results show vibro-tactile stimuli increase the arousal level and reduce the valence level of the emotions; however, vibrotactile stimuli cannot convey the desired valence level as they cannot render the tactile patterns related to each emotion properly.

Keywords:

• Affective haptic
• wearable device
• vibro-tactile
• communication technology design
• Persian user

Acknowledgments

We thank Ms. Saeb for helping us to provide and translate the sentences from English to Persian with preserving the original meaning.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amirhosein Asghari Tavana

Amirhosein Asghari Tavana Amirhosein Asghari Tavana has been pursuing a Master’s degree in Industrial Design at Tehran University since 2021, with a specific focus on interaction design. The tendency of his research is toward tangible interfaces, emotions and human-technology interaction.

Hojjat Samare Habili

Hojjat Samare Habili recipient of the Golden Medal winner in the National Industrial Design Olympiad and a Master’s student at Tehran University, specializing in the domain of interaction design since 2021, dedicated to exploring the realms of Human-Technology Interactions, Tangible and Embodied Interactions, and Emotional Conveyance.

Mehran Fateminia

Mehran Fateminia, a PhD holder in Industrial Design, is a freelance designer in Tehran. He guides research and product development for companies. He is also an assistant professor at Tehran University, lecturing in design interaction and methodology, with a strong expertise in design thinking.