Nowadays ‘touch’ means ‘keeping in touch.’
The potential impact of lockdown and isolation on mental health is irrefutable. The pandemic has forced the globe to embrace 24/7 online communication in effort to stay connected with colleagues and loved ones. This is a catalyst for rethinking connectivity and closeness in the digital space, finding design opportunities to recreate and redefine different modes of connection during crisis, and how UX can help address bigger questions with socio-cultural importance.
Depending on the industry and job description, UX is generally about orchestrating entire experiences by considering feelings and behaviours, social and cultural contexts, business objectives and touchpoints to facilitate and cater for a user’s different emotional states.
“People never touched one another. The custom had become obsolete.”
The quote comes from E.M Forster’s novel “The Machine Stops” wherein humans live in computer-controlled, subterranean cells and communicate via video calls. This dystopia has thankfully not been realised, but COVID-19 and the necessary strategies to contain it have made touch taboo. Our other senses have to compensate, with visual experiences replacing tactile ones. Face-to-face communication has several sources of contextual information that helps us comprehend meaning, but video narrows down sensory input to ocular and auditory senses. We simply cannot connect as deeply as we could in person, leading to our other senses overloading.
Screens are essential components of smartphones, tablets, TV sets, laptops and wearable devices. This isn’t new, as screens were a prominent part of life pre-COVID, but now they dominate. Digital technology has been a lifeline during the COVID-19 health crisis to those that could afford it, but the impact on human connection is complex.
The available evidence suggests that screen time and eponymous ‘screen fatigue’ is associated with hypertension, myopia, depression, sleep disorders, and many other non-communicable diseases. In thinking about orchestrating and designing digital experiences, it is critical to assess the adverse mental and physical health outcomes to spot gaps, which can be addressed with design opportunities focused on healthier digital experiences.
“Humans, like other mammals, are born bathed in touch.”
Professor of Psychodynamic Neuroscience at UCL Aikaterini Fotopoulou was part of a team that created The Touch Test, which reported that as the pandemic progressed, the lack of touch made people crave it more, and even people in multiple-occupancy situations began longing for more touch, termed ‘skin hunger’.
New digital products make an effort to address these communication gaps with AI, but they all lack the dimension of touch and other important senses. Touch is a layered, complex sensation that is difficult to replicate and manipulate digitally because touch depends on our other senses, perception and imagination. It is a group of interconnected sensory systems. Most mainstream technologies target individual senses instead of considering them collectively.
Instead of trying to replicate something that cannot be replicated, we need to create entirely new ways of being together. To create a truly immersive experience, the full range of visual, audio, and haptic channels need to be considered holistically.
Can affective computing and XR tech fill the gaps?
Affective computing is when a computer is able to recognize certain patterns in humans and identify a user’s emotional state, but it also works the other way. A computer can transmit emotions to the user based on specific input. Hypothetically, during a live-video meeting, software could be able to read the room for user’s emotional states and make environmental changes (room lighting, colour settings) to address negative ones. The key element in this entire process is AI/machine learning.
Affective computing can go beyond facial expressions, analysing biometrics like pulse or temperature and speech variations. As a result, computers can process and simulate emotions from a variety of data points in the context of a digital ecosystem of interconnected products, such as wearable devices like Fitbits and smartphones.
The role of UX designers for re-thinking connectivity
Mainstream technologies for extended reality for VR and AR create human experiences through visual and auditory stimuli that replicate sensations associated with the physical world.
The most popular VR and AR tech use head-mounted displays, accelerometers and loudspeakers as the basis for three-dimensional, computer-generated environments that can exist in isolation or as overlays on actual scenery. However, when attempting to intersect XR with affective computing (and in comparison to the eyes and ears) skin is a relatively underexplored sensory interface that could greatly enhance experiences at a qualitative level.
The resulting technology creates many opportunities for use where the skin provides an electronically programmable communication and sensory input channel to the body, as demonstrated through applications in social media and personal engagement, prosthetic control and feedback, and gaming and entertainment.
Designers must apply the necessary human-centered research and design process to leverage these haptic interactions in ways that add delight and value to future consumer experiences. Technology alone will not transform the future. It is only when strategic product design and UX use the power of technology and treat human sensory inputs collectively, beyond off-the-shelf, standardised emotional states, that real human needs can be met and true innovation is achieved.
UX designers need to think about how to redesign these experiences in a healthy manner, taking ethics, accessibility and inclusivity into account. Design guidelines and standards are limited and a universal language for smart objects is still many years off. Now is the time to experiment and address poignant social issues in order to reconfigure healthy practices for present and future audiences.
The original presentation version of this blog was delivered at Mobile UX London’s Festival of UX & Design by Yiota Demetriou, UX Consultant at Amdaris and UX trainer at UX Academy. Yiota’s expertise combines Human-Computer Interaction, The Science and Philosophy of Human Experience and Theatre & Performance Studies. To view all recorded presentations, click here.