Poster: A Participatory Workshop to Design Vibrothermal
Haptics of a Smart Fidget Surface for Remote Workers
Yuyu LeeKai Kunze

yuyu.lee@kmd.keio.ac.jp
Keio University
Yokohama, Japan

kai@kmd.keio.ac.jp
Keio University
Yokohama, Japan

Figure 1: Development Process (a) Textures utilized in Zoom workshop gathered by six participants. (b) Participant-selected
pleasant texture-vibration combinations for eyes-closed resting scenario. (c) Prototype form and material sketch models developed based on workshop findings. (d) Current prototype technical schematics.

ABSTRACT1

In this paper, we describe our progress on designing a passive fidgeting material for remote work scenarios. We focus on vibrotactile
feedback and present the insights of a remote workshop with 6
participants exploring materials with haptic feedback. Our overallgoal, is to design a smart tabletop surface for prolonged computer
work, reducing stress and improving body awareness.

As governments and healthcare experts around the world call forchanging lifestyles in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the development, and usage of remote communication and touch-lesstechnologies have become an essential part of the “new normal”. At
the same time, the absence of touch and physical contact highlights
their critical importance in human life from school to hospital tocare facilities. To reduce the virus spread, many industries haveasked workers to work remotely and studies predict the trend wouldcontinue post-pandemic. These studies also show workers to sufferfrom isolation in their mandatory work-from-home [1]. With isolation and decrease in engagement being a large part of life in the"new normal", technology can perhaps contribute positively to thischange in lifestyle.
In this paper, we explore how to use touch and other somatosensory elements as part of the remote work experience to increase
body awareness and supplement the conventional auditory andvisual telepresence technologies. The contributions are as follows:(1) We present the results of a study exploring which haptic and somatosensory props and interactions are comforting to users during
prolonged computer work, (2) We present an initial design of anInteractive Fidget Surface using thermal feedback.

KEYWORDS
haptics, body awareness, remote work, texture perception, affective
technology, mental wellness, user-centered design, participatory
designACM Reference Format:
Yuyu Lee and Kai Kunze. 2021. Poster: A Participatory Workshop to Design Vibrothermal Haptics of a Smart Fidget Surface for Remote Workers.
In Adjunct Proceedings of the 2021 ACM International Joint Conference on
Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing and Proceedings of the 2021 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers (UbiComp-ISWC ’21 Adjunct),
September 21–26, 2021, Virtual, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2 pages.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3460418.3479279
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal orclassroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributedfor profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citationon the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored.
For all other uses, contact the owner/author(s).
UbiComp-ISWC ’21 Adjunct, September 21–26, 2021, Virtual, USA© 2021 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).
ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-8461-2/21/09.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3460418.3479279

2INTRODUCTION

RELATED WORK AND APPROACH

Having surveyed works illustrating the affective qualities of materials, and research on affective technology, we believe affective
haptics and thermal feedback can be adapted into the desktop andaround digital devices to improve mental wellness in remote work46

UbiComp-ISWC ’21 Adjunct, September 21–26, 2021, Virtual, USA

Lee and Kunze

settings and for users experiencing isolation, and decrease in engagement [2, 3].
How the individual perceive their remote work environmentis often very subjective. Therefore, we conducted an exploratory
study aimed at evaluating diverse participants’ perceptions of added
somatosensory textures and vibration stimuli alongside computerbased work. The study explores the role of textural diversity andhaptic actuation for application to desktop surfaces and the relationship between haptics, sensory experience, and remote workstress.

3and to close their eyes and experience their selection as they would
on a work break and to describe how the experience feels.

4FINDINGS, DISCUSSION AND OUTLOOK

Remote Session: The session from home allowed participants toreflect and discuss their routines and pain points by directly referencing their work-from-home environment. Participants werecomfortable interacting with the set-ups and had no trouble describing how each texture, in combination with vibration, madethem feel; as well as how slight differences in texture (i.e. fabrics
differing in fibre lengths) elicited a difference in their subjective
affective response.
Fidgeting: Participants differentiated between the use of tactile
stimuli for fidgeting versus relaxation. During discussions andclosed-eyes rest, participants gravitated to small textures with giveor elasticity to fidget with. The characterization of the act is divided.
While in some, it is playful and elicited happiness, in others, it ischaracterized by compulsion and is neutral in affect. During thee-mail task, fidgeting was not performed, and in the activity, passive
vibration was more paid attention to.
Use of Stimuli for Stress: Participants cited two main modes theyfind the stimuli helpful. One is for moments of stress accompanied
by anxious thoughts, or when encountering difficulty in problemsolving work. Participants found vibration over soft surfaces tobring about a calming effect, and expressed it could distract themin a good way. Attention to material thickness was noted by everyone. Thickness in soft material was noted to make vibration moreenjoyable and cushioning would be nice for long-hours.
Use of Stimuli for Concentration: Several participants referredto the stimuli as "something new" that adds interest to their desk
set-up. The same participants suggested they would find the stimuli
useful to help them focus during repetitive computer tasks, such asprocedural tasks.
Use of Set-up While Resting: When asked the most preferredstimuli combination, with or without vibration, half chose to incorporate vibration. The concept of mapping the experience to stresslevels was well-received and several expressed they could envision
it helping them recognize and facilitate emotions. In discussion,
participants also suggested more variability and lower intensity inthe vibration would be more pleasant.

EXPLORATORY WORKSHOPThe workshop was conducted with 2 male and 4 female participants(mean age = 26.5; with a standard deviation of 3.27, students, workers with full, part or hybrid remote work schedules). Recognizing
the diversity in job content across occupations and its implication
on situations and intensities in which stress arise, the pre-survey
asks for the ratio of work performed and stress ranking between
five categories of work: Reactionary, Planning, Procedural, Insecurity, and Problem-Solving work [1]. We gained insights on thequalifying conditions and cognitive tasks that affect stress. We
also surveyed participants’ living arrangements, lifestyle and workchanges due to Covid-19, self-ratings on mental health, and stressrelief methods to understand external factors’ impact on their remote work experience. We developed a lo-fi prototype participants

Figure 2: Exploratory Workshop Flow
can arrange from home, at their desk. Participants were asked to setup a massager app, Sensova 1 ) on their mobile device, and to collect
5 - 7 materials from around their home to place over the vibration.
The set-up was intended to enable conversations about the vibration actuation in combination with textures. The material selection
was based on material library classifications2 . Textures typicallynot found in consumer electronics were chosen, as we wanted toexplore users’ perception of diverse materials in conjunction withcomputer interactions.
Participants performed two activities modeled after modes during remote work. The first simulated a work task using an e-mailassignment from an English lesson resource.3 We instructed eachparticipant to begin with the e-mail task only and to rate the experience. Next, participants performed the task with stimuli set-ups. The
SAM manikin was used to gain insights into the valence-arousaldominance levels each combination elicited. In the next segment,participants were asked to choose their most preferred combination(with the choice of multiple textures, and with or without Sensova)

Discussion and Outlook. Three aspects are being surveyed in
the consideration of the technical implementations in the prototype
design. We take the feedback from the low-fi prototypes proposedby participants and related work to come up with an initial system. The system includes the use of a series of vibration cues andthermalhaptics actuation (pulsing actuation of heat at 33 Celcius).

REFERENCES[1] Arnold B Bakker and Wido Oerlemans. 2011. Subjective well-being in organizations. The Oxford handbook of positive organizational scholarship 49 (2011),178–189.
[2] Michael Karlesky and Katherine Isbister. 2013. Fidget Widgets: Secondary Playful
Interactions in Support of Primary Serious Tasks. In CHI ’13 Adjunct (Paris, France)(CHI EA ’13). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1149–1154. https://doi.org/10.1145/2468356.2468561[3] S. E. Wilkes and M. A. Miodownik. 2018. Materials library collections as tools
for interdisciplinary research. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 43, 1 (2018), 3–23.
PMID: 29576803.

1 Sensova Vibrator Application https://apps.apple.com/ro/app/sensova-vibrator-ai-

massage/id1546196440
2 Material District https://materialdistrict.com/material/
3 Formalor Informal E-mail Exercise, MacMillan Business English.
http://www.businessenglishonline.net/resources/email-english-worksheets/

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