Speculating the Impacts of Mediated Social Touch Technology

2026-06-03

AI Summary

This study addresses a critical gap in mediated social touch (MST) research, which has predominantly focused on immediate benefits while overlooking broader sociotechnical implications. For the first time, the speculative design approach Future Ripples is introduced to the MST domain to explore long-term consequences across the full pipeline of touch recording, synthesis, and replay. Through three cross-role participatory workshops involving end users, domain experts, and haptic researchers, participants collaboratively envisioned future scenarios, opportunities, and risks associated with MST technologies. The analysis yielded four key themes and three core challenges, offering actionable sociotechnical guidance for MST system design and demonstrating the efficacy and value of the Future Ripples framework in prospectively assessing emerging haptic technologies.

Abstract

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.

Problem

• Mediated Social Touch
• sociotechnical impacts
• haptic interfaces
• Future Ripples
• touch reproduction

Innovation

• Mediated Social Touch
• Future Ripples
• haptic interfaces
• sociotechnical impacts
• touch reproduction