This 触(haptic)感(sense)觉(feel)安(soothe) project explores the human tactile sense which is a critical contributing element in the experience of design.

While haptic design focuses on the sense of touch, its effects in design are more nuanced—it is a largely unexamined form of sensory communication. Commonly, we always refer to the senses of sight and sound to experience the space we are in and to interact with the world. This project explores the unexpected responses to kinetic haptics and their small yet surprising affect on the body’s aesthetic and emotional reaction.

This project started with an investigation of the act of distracted fidgeting and repetitive motion. It explores and proposes a series of tactile aesthetic experiences through affective haptic objects, which can be extended and manipulated into different ways. The intention of this project is to create a series of propositional wearables that have affective impacts, which allow people to interact and fidget with them, in a discrete yet aesthetically interesting manner.

This project aims to release people’s address temporary incidental tensions and stresses. It provokes a discourse around for the ways in which we use our hands and how might we design things that legitimise our fidgeting. Wearables, Action and Kinetics—these elements are central to the narrative of my research. This project explores those elements and builds them propositional objects addressing 触(haptic), 感(sense), 觉(feel) and 安(soothe). The project presents a propositional range of 4 objects for the hand, and invites from this a discussion around movement, social norms and the ways in which we use our hands.