Tactile technologies

Abstract

RESEARCH QUESTION: How can sensory design, and specifically tactility, be used to support the production of individual meaning within the context of (developing) mobile communication technologies?

This project uses sensory design and specifically tactile design as a basis to design a mobile phone for approximately five years in the future. In doing so it has investigated the fields of tangible interaction and craft, and suggests a framework by which these different but complementary fields may be used in the service of product design.

The theoretical framework is based on the assertion by Silverstone et al. (1992, cited by Ling, 2004) that mobile phones are “doubly articulated” as a medium “through which we communicate and through which we maintain social contact” and a physical object “to which we carefully assign meaning” (p28). From this, and animated through a concept model, two specific strategies are suggested: re-embodying (placing) screens in handheld electronic devices through physicality and incorporating craft into the designing of handheld electronic devices.

This project has involved finding relevant resources on sensory design and tangible interaction, a phenomenological investigation into mobile phones to find the current and potential moments of meaning created by tactile design, and heuristic enquiry into the process of craftsmanship through jewellery.

The designed output from this project is located approximately five years from now, so that both new/novel forms of manufacture and emergent trend trends relating to mobile phone use could be incorporated.