Altering One's Body-Perception Through E-Textiles and Haptic Metaphors

Abstract

Technologies change rapidly our perception of reality, moving from augmented to virtual to magical. While e-textiles are a key component in exergame or space suits, the transformative potential of the internal side of garments to create embodied experiences still remains largely unexplored. This paper is the result from an art-science collaborative project that combines recent neuroscience findings, body-centered design principles and 2D vibrotactile array-based fabrics to alter one's body perception. We describe an iterative design process intertwined with two user studies on the effects on bodyperceptions and emotional responses of various vibration patterns within textile that were designed as spatial haptic metaphors. Our results show potential in considering materials (e.g., rocks) as sensations to design for body perceptions (e.g., being heavy, strong) and emotional responses. We discuss these results in terms of sensory effects on body perception and synergetic impact to research on embodiment in virtual environments, human-computer interaction, and e-textile design. The work brings a new perspective to the sensorial design of embodied experiences which is based on "material perception" and haptic metaphors, and highlights potential opportunities opened by haptic clothing to change body-perception.

It Sounds Cool: Exploring Sonification of Mid-Air Haptic Textures Exploration on Texture Judgments, Body Perception, and Motor Behaviour

“…That is, with the chosen sounds we aim not only to resemble feelings in a tactile way (e.g., soft, smooth), but also feelings that could be associated with multisensory real-life experiences, in order to enable different body sensations (e.g., heavy, big, natural). This is in line with prior work suggesting that people can associate haptic patterns (e.g., rocks, clouds) and sounds (e.g., hitting marble) with different body sensations (e.g., being stronger, being lighter, having dryer skin) [17], [34], [44].…”

“…Research question 2 (RQ2): Does the sonification of texture exploration influence participants' subjective sensations of their own hand? Following the work by Tajadura et al, on altering one's body-perception using haptic metaphors [44], we assessed 13 body sensations -speed, weight, strength, naturality, flexibility, hardness, sensitivity, size, tension, viscosity, temperature, moisture, and roughness. In other words, we explored whether some of the perceived haptic attributes of the texture are transferred to participants' hand perception.…”

“…Participants selected a score that best expresses their subjective hand sensations felt during the texture exploration task using a 7-point Likert scale. This questionnaire was adapted from previous studies [38], [44], by leaving the items associated to haptic attributes and adding new items to explore any possible bodily sensations elicited by mid-air haptics and the sounds used. The questionnaire comprised of the sentence "I felt my hand:" accompanied by 13 items related to the hand's sensation, which ranged from: "smooth" to "rough" (Roughness); "soft" to "hard" (Hardness); "weak" to "strong" (Strength); "cold" to "warm" (Temperature); "wet" to "dry" (Moisture); "slippery" to "sticky" (Viscosity); "slow" to "quick" (Speed); "light" to "heavy" (Weight); "natural (as usual)" to "unnatural" (Nat-urality); "stiff" to "flexible" (Flexibility) "small" to "large" (Size); "loose" to "tense" (Tension).…”

A transdisciplinary collaborative journey leading to sensorial clothing

“…The visitors were able to try all three vibration patterns with two different surface materials. Results indicated that the different combinations of vibration patterns and surface materials could influence emotional arousal, and bodily sensations related to weight, hardness, strength and size, as described in (Tajadura- Jiménez et al, 2020). The feedback from these try-outs alongside our own bodily experiences informed our decisions about the final prototype.…”

The sense of agency in emerging technologies for human–computer integration: A review

“… Examples of outcome augmentation technology: Retargeting techniques modulating (A) object quantity ( Azmandian et al, 2016 ), (B,C) object weight ( Rietzler et al, 2018 ; Samad et al, 2019 ), (D) navigation direction ( Sharif et al, 2001 ), (E) navigation elevation ( Nagao et al, 2018 ), and body perception (F,G) ( Tajadura-Jiménez et al, 2019 , 2020 ). Images from the original publications, fully attribution is given to the original authors.…”