Douglas Atkinson

The brain's response to pleasant touch: an EEG investigation of tactile caressing.

Somatosensation as a proximal sense can have a strong impact on our attitude toward physical objects and other human beings. However, relatively little is known about how hedonic valence of touch is processed at the cortical level. Here we investigated the electrophysiological correlates of affective tactile sensation during caressing of the right forearm with pleasant and unpleasant textile fabrics. We show dissociation between more physically driven differential brain responses to the different fabrics in early somatosensory cortex – the well-known mu-suppression (10–20 Hz) – and a beta-band response (25–30 Hz) in presumably higher-order somatosensory areas in the right hemisphere that correlated well with the subjective valence of tactile caressing. Importantly, when using single trial classification techniques, beta-power significantly distinguished between pleasant and unpleasant stimulation on a single trial basis with high accuracy. Our results therefore suggest a dissociation of the sensory and affective aspects of touch in the somatosensory system and may provide features that may be used for single trial decoding of affective mental states from simple electroencephalographic measurements.

The affective experience of handling digital fabrics: tactile and visual cross-modal effects

In the textile sector, emotions are often associated with both physical touch and manipulation of the product. Thus there is the need to recreate the affective experiences of touching and interacting with fabrics using commonly available internet technology. New digital interactive representations of fabrics simulating handling have been proposed with the idea of bringing the digital experience of fabrics closer to the reality. This study evaluates the contribution of handling real fabrics to viewing digital interactive animations of said fabrics and vice versa. A combination of self-report and physiological measures was used. Results showed that having previous physical handling experience of the fabrics significantly increased pleasure and engagement in the visual experience of the digital handling of the same fabrics. Two factors mediated these experiences: gender and interoceptive awareness. Significant results were not found for the opposite condition.

An Embodiment Perspective of Affective Touch Behaviour in Experiencing Digital Textiles

Handling textiles is not only a semantic experience, but also an emotional one. Whilst handling a textile is crucial for its appreciation and understanding, this channel is still little explored in the digital realm, where focus has been given to the haptic feedback aspect of handling. In this paper, we discuss the importance of touch behaviour in interactive digital handling to allow people to explore, emotionally engage with and understand textile properties. We build on our findings from previous studies, where we investigated how people handle fabrics in real-life situations and more generally how their touch behaviour may affect the experience, relating it to literature from textile, HCI, embodied cognition and embodied affect to discuss how current technology should develop to provide a more realistic touch experience. Additionally, we consider how crowd sourcing of the textile experience could be extended by taking into account non-verbal expressions of textile-handling experience. We show that further knowledge is needed to design interactive technology that supports active and unconstrained touch, as well as the affective aspects of experience.

Crowdsourcing an emotional wardrobe

Selecting clothing online requires decision-making about sensorial experiences, but online environments provide only limited sensorial information. Inferences are therefore made on the basis of product pictures and their textual description. This is often unreliable as it is either based on the designers understanding of the product or deprived of perceptual content due to the difficulty of expressing such experiences. Using a purpose built website that combines and cross references multi-modal descriptive media, this study aims at investigating the possibility of using crowdsourcing mechanisms and multi-modal language to engage consumers in providing enriched descriptions of their tactile experiences of garments.

The tactile triangle: a design research framework demonstrated through tactile comparisons of textile materials

Tactile experiences of textile materials are difficult to communicate and elicit. To interrogate this space we propose the tactile triangle, a framework to facilitate systematic analysis and comparison of tactile experiences. The three levels reflect different aspects of tactile experience and possible methods to capture them: physical properties, in which human senses or objective testing measure fabric properties; the perceptual space level in which triadic comparisons reveal combinations of various dimensions which capture and describe tactile experiences; and finally the communication level, in which design games elicit languages communicating tactile perceptions. A case study illustrates the frameworks use to compare the tactile experiences of textiles in experts and consumers. The results show expert and consumer perceptions overlapped and correlated well to objective measures except in the perception of temperature. We conclude by discussing the frameworks effectiveness, the contribution of individual methods, and its potential as a communication tool for designers.

The elsewheres of product engagement

Genre: Documentary street imagery of digital and non-digital product engagement. top: A man appears so engaged with his ipad, he seems to have forgotten to light his cigarette— a scene observed as part of a group documentary image-making activity during a workshop on fashion and sustainable HcI at DIS 2012. bottom: An advertisement for prada sunglasses dwarfs its surroundings in the paris airport. the store name on the shop sign advertises an imperative duty to buy duty free.

Post-Industrial Fashion and the Digital Body

At its core fashion is a heavily industrialised manufacturing industry, yet the historic fashion capitals, London, Paris and New York have long since abandoned large-scale manufacture while still educating new designers. Jamer Hunt proposes new modes of ‘Post-Industrial Design’, but are these reflected in contemporary fashion practice? This chapter discusses the work of three emerging designers as a basis from which to explore whether changing digitally informed mindsets and a loss of material experience are bringing new fashion practices closer to Hunt’s vision, and what this might mean for fashion practitioners and industry.