With growing research on haptic interfaces, Mediated Social Touch (MST) technologies offer the potential to record, synthesise, and reproduce (RSR) touch experiences across space and time, enabling, for instance, a hug from afar and from the past. Although much of the existing research highlights the direct benefits of these systems, such as reducing loneliness and providing emotional support, little attention has been paid to their broader sociotechnical impacts. To address this gap, we used the Future Ripples method to speculate on possible effects of MST. We conducted three workshops with 24 participants, including potential users, domain experts, and haptics researchers. Throughout these sessions, participants collectively envisioned possible future scenarios, alongside opportunities and threats, and proposed actionable responses. Our qualitative analysis organised these insights into four themes and three distinctive challenges. These findings offer haptics researchers intervention points across the RSR pipeline to inform MST design, alongside methodological insights from applying Future Ripples to MST technology.

Long-distance relationships (LDRs) struggle to sustain intimacy without physical touch. Existing mediated social touch systems rely on designer-authored haptic patterns, which limit opportunities for personalization and shared meaning-making. We present Onni, a haptic interface that lets couples collaboratively define and experience a shared library of haptic interactions. In Study 1, we conducted co-creation workshops (n = 20) to examine how couples negotiate and align meanings in haptic interactions. In Study 2, we deployed Onni in everyday routines (n = 6) to explore how these interactions are adopted, adapted, and ritualized. Our findings illustrate that couples co-create and personalize haptic interactions through continuous exploration, negotiation, and situational adaptation. By integrating a dyadic co-design approach, an end-user authoring interface for a shared action–feedback haptic repertoire, and a longitudinal view of how meanings evolve in everyday LDR routines, this work advances the understanding of haptic meaning-making as a collaboratively constructed and ritualized process. It offers concrete design implications for building personalized, evolving haptic systems that support intimacy in LDRs.

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Drawing on queer and disability theories alongside tangible body mapping techniques, we explore alternative ways of mapping embodied experiences and expressing affective sensations. Our collaborative autoethnographic approach incorporates sensors to trace our somatic experiences over time, pairing visualizations of contextual biodata with personal reflections in written or spoken form. We unpack how these alternative approaches to body mapping support reflecting on, communicating, and deepening understanding of embodied experiences by foregrounding temporal and situated aspects. We offer expanded body mapping methods by sharing a plurality of experiences that embrace queer and crip ways of knowing, foregrounding alternate temporal and spatial representations.

This PhD explores the potential of leveraging the unique qualities of temperature experiences in the design of tactile and thermal interfaces. Thermal stimuli can evoke various emotions and sensations, from relaxation or nostalgia to feelings of vitality. The research examines the design space of temperature-related experiences, driven by the growing body of literature in multi-sensory technologies and thermal feedback. While temperature feedback has shown promise in enhancing virtual immersion or interpersonal communication, the focus has primarily been on technological aspects, leaving experiential and aesthetic dimensions largely unexplored. This paper highlights the need for a more nuanced understanding of temperature experiences to inform future design and enhance the richness of thermal interfaces in various applications.

The design of thermal experiences, often only associated with hot and cold sensations, encompasses a much wider range of qualities that can evoke emotional and sensory effects on users extending beyond this basic binary nature. Through a phenomenological study of a traditional Finnish sauna, we delve into how individuals perceive and express full-body heat sensations using both verbal and non-verbal methods and infer dimensions and parameters of heat that can inform future thermal experience design. Findings from participants’ expressions lead to formulating experiential dimensions such as the dynamic nature of heat, the aesthetics of discomfort, considerations of texture and heaviness, interoception, and personal memories that expand our understanding what heat as a design material consists of and the various possibilities it may hold. Furthermore, we propose three thermal parameters of motion, timbre, and distribution which can contribute to designing more intricate heat experiences and pave the way for further research in temperature interfaces.

Global and systemic sustainability challenges increasingly require innovation teams to incorporate holistic, long-term thinking into their ideation. Since a comprehensive foresight process would prove too burdensome, faster methods are needed. The Future Ripples method was devised to meet this need through reflective practice in four consecutive workshops. It builds on the well-known Futures Wheel foresight method, which offers a collaborative process for brainstorming consequences and impacts. Additionally, the new approach encompasses scanning for weak signals and trends while catering to innovation teams. Analysis of the workshop activities and outcomes suggests that the Future Ripples method can nurture the anticipation skills of innovation teams and help them develop diverse, novel, yet plausible futures. The paper also discusses the role of reflection, metaphors, and the balance between critical and creative thinking in developing holistic futures.