Language for touch: aesthetics, experience and technologies for next generation touch interfaces

Explorations into the aesthetic, experiential, and emotional qualities of human-computer-interaction (HCI) has provided important and valuable insights for designing future interactive systems. This thesis a reflexive process that cycles through the making of an interface and then reflecting on the theory and concepts which affected its design. This process was used during design of three case-studies which explore different qualities of touch and tactile interactions. Analyzing the design process of each case-study reveals four recurring conceptual strands, that are stitched together to construct a cohesive framework for analyzing and understanding the aesthetic and embodied experience of tactile systems: 1.) InterSensory Mapping, 2.)Semantics, 3.)Technology, and 4.) Materiality. This analysis shows the practicality of the framework as being an effective tool for generating unique tactile input devices, which in a broader perspective, offers an example for designers on how to integrate theoretically insights and frameworks in their respective practice.