Connecting Couples in Long-Distance Relationships : Towards Unconventional Computer-Mediated Emotional Communication Systems

The number of couples who find themselves in a long-distance relationship (LDR) is increasing for a wide range of reasons, such as overseas employment, academic pursuits, military duty, and similar circumstances. With the myriad of communication channels enabled by the low cost and ubiquity of computer-mediated communication technologies, couples in LDRs are able to stay in touch with each other around the globe. However, recent studies have revealed that the mainstream communication tools are inadequate to support the full spectrum of communication needed in intimate relationships. Emotional communication is one of the fundamental needs in close relationships, as it forms an important part of intimacy. This dissertation argues that there is a gap between what is known about LDR couples’ needs in research and what has been implemented for them in practice. The aim of this work is to bridge this gap by mediating emotional communication through unconventional user interfaces that use interaction solutions outside of the scope of their conventional use, with a particular focus on couples who sustain a committed LDR. Here, taking research through design as a core approach, a variety of qualitative methods were employed to seek answers to the research questions. This dissertation includes eight case studies, each of which is dedicated to answering its corresponding research question(s). Study I presents a systematic literature review which explored the current state of the art and identified the design opportunities. Study II introduces a series of co-design activities with five couples in LDRs to reveal the needs and challenges of users in an LDR. Studies III and IV propose two functional prototypes for unconventional communication systems to connect couples in LDRs. Study V showcases 12 design concepts of wearables created by the participants to support their own LDR. Study VI describes how four low-resolution prototypes created for mediating LDRs by the participants in the workshop would be used in real-world contexts. Studies VII and VIII each present a novel design tool to be used as a scaffold when designing communication systems for supporting LDRs: specifically, a conceptual design framework and a card-based design toolkit. This dissertation contributes new knowledge to the field of human-computer interaction through design interventions. It showcases a spectrum of practices which can be seen as a first step towards mediating emotional communication for couples in LDRs using unconventional communication systems. The findings comprise theoretical and empirical insights—derived from the eight case studies in which the author identified design opportunities and design considerations—relating to how couples in LDRs can be better supported by unconventional computer-mediated emotional communication systems

ARTIFICIAL AGENTS MODELING FOR INTIMATE TELEPRESENCE

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

All in the Family: Exploring Design Personas of Systems for Remote Communication with Preschoolers

Although there have been recent advances in remote communication technologies that foster connectedness and intimacy over a distance, systems designed for communicating with preliterate preschoolers—a desired use case—are not yet prevalent, nor are there clear guidelines for their design. We conducted a mixed-methods study to characterize the current practices, goals, and needs of people who wish to use remote communication systems with young children. We present quantitative and qualitative findings on the motivations for communicating, the habits, activities, and patterns that have been established, and the barriers and concerns faced. We synthesized these findings into four design personas that describe the desired functionality and requirements of systems to support remote communication with preschoolers. For each persona, we systematically evaluated 60 research-based systems based on the extent to which each persona’s requirements were covered, demonstrating that none of the personas were greatly satisfied with the available tools

Turing-Test Evaluation of a Mobile Haptic Virtual Reality Kissing Machine

Various communication systems have been developed to integrate the haptic channel in digital communication. Future directions of such haptic technologies are moving towards realistic virtual reality applications and human-robot social interaction. With the digitisation of touch, robots equipped with touch sensors and actuators can communicate with humans on a more emotional and intimate level, such as sharing a hug or kiss just like humans do. This paper presents the design guideline, implementation and evaluations of a novel haptic kissing machine for smart phones - the Kissenger machine. The key novelties and contributions of the paper are: (i) A novel haptic kissing device for mobile phones, which uses dynamic perpendicular force stimulation to transmit realistic sensations of kissing in order to enhance intimacy and emotional connection of digital communication; (ii) Extensive evaluations of the Kissenger machine, including a lab experiment that compares mediated kissing with Kissenger to real kissing, a unique haptic Turing test that involves the first academic study of humanmachine kiss, and a field study of the effects of Kissenger on long distance relationships

Designing an Online Platform to Support Long-distance Romantic Relationships

Nowadays, Long-Distance Relationships (LDRs) are increasingly popular and ubiquitous for many reasons, including travel for career, education, and parent care. Compared to geographically-close relationships; it seems LDRs face many challenges: difficulties in communication, time zone difference, temptations from others, and lack of physical engagement, among other things. While the rise of computer-mediated communication provide many channels for interaction for LDR partners, statistics show that many long-distance relationships still don\u27t last. I focused on two important factors that can impact relationship satisfaction—self-disclosure and a caring response. I employed an online survey to understand how partners self-disclose and show a caring response with each other in long-distance romantic relationships versus in an in-person romantic relationship. I found that the best channel to support self-disclosure and care is video, but video is not as convenient as text. I also discovered that, for most participants, the favorite part of offline communication is being able to see facial expressions and body language, hear tone of voice and have physical contact. Inspired by this research and participant feedback through focus groups, I designed an app called LoveNotes. The app emphasizes facial expression and tone, and uses the connotation of love letters. This app has potential to encourage LDR partners to express emotion and thoughts in a stronger, more accurate, more detectable way

Social touch in human–computer interaction

Touch is our primary non-verbal communication channel for conveying intimate emotions and as such essential for our physical and emotional wellbeing. In our digital age, human social interaction is often mediated. However, even though there is increasing evidence that mediated touch affords affective communication, current communication systems (such as videoconferencing) still do not support communication through the sense of touch. As a result, mediated communication does not provide the intense affective experience of co-located communication. The need for ICT mediated or generated touch as an intuitive way of social communication is even further emphasized by the growing interest in the use of touch-enabled agents and robots for healthcare, teaching, and telepresence applications. Here, we review the important role of social touch in our daily life and the available evidence that affective touch can be mediated reliably between humans and between humans and digital agents. We base our observations on evidence from psychology, computer science, sociology, and neuroscience with focus on the first two. Our review shows that mediated affective touch can modulate physiological responses, increase trust and affection, help to establish bonds between humans and avatars or robots, and initiate pro-social behavior. We argue that ICT mediated or generated social touch can (a) intensify the perceived social presence of remote communication partners and (b) enable computer systems to more effectively convey affective information. However, this research field on the crossroads of ICT and psychology is still embryonic and we identify several topics that can help to mature the field in the following areas: establishing an overarching theoretical framework, employing better research methodologies, developing basic social touch building blocks, and solving specific ICT challenges

Children, youth and the mobile phone

Children, youth and the mobile phone In its short life, a surprisingly large literature on the use of mobile communication among children and teens has been written. Indeed, in recent years there has hardly been a conference or a collection of readings that did not include work in this area. The iconic status of the mobile telephone among children and teens has been one of the big surprises associated with this form of communication. While originally conceived as a way to allow business people to interact, mobile telephony has become, perhaps more than anything else, a phenomenon of teens and young people. Reports from Japan (Hashimoto, 2002; Ito, 2005), the Philippines (Ellwood-Clayton, 2005) the broader Asian context (Castells et al. , 2007; Kim, 2004), Norway (Ling, 1999, 2000, 2001a,b; Ling and Yttri, 2002; Skog and Jamtøy, 2002), the UK (Green and Smith, 2002), Finland (Rautiainen and Kasesniemi, 2000; Nurmela, 2003; ..