A Cabinet of Affective Touches (ACAT) represents an approach to generate tacit design knowledge and build a repository for creating, experiencing and reflecting on designing affective touch with soft robotic technology. Despite being increasingly recognised as a somaesthetic material for affective touch interactions, knowledge on technical parameters and the experiential quality of touch with soft robotic technology is investigated fragmentally in separate disciplines. Sixty four haptics design students used the ACAT platform and created a repository of seventeen designs intended for all primary affective dimensions, covering both positive and negative affective experience. We illustrate how this process cultivated tacit design knowledge and fostered critical reflection on novel design space, in particular, on how to facilitate the creation and sharing the designs of uncomfortable touch.

Tactile sensors play a key role in human-machine interaction (HMI), providing essential tactile measurement capabilities for this field, where their performance directly determines the operational safety and haptic quality of HMI machines. When tactile sensors are applied to human or machine surfaces, their ability to fit comfortably and conform to the curves of the body is a significant challenge to address. Existing stretchable and flexible sensors show excellent adaptive conformability and accuracy. Yet, their fabrication methods usually rely on expensive and specialised equipment and are not accessible to many researchers from the interdisciplinary field of human-computer interaction to implement, customize and deploy. To address this problem, this paper proposes a stretchable pressure sensor of low-cost and fabrication complexity, drawing inspiration from the ancient paper-cutting art of Kirigami. The developed prototype is experimentally tested for its ability to conform to the human body, while being characterized by a high force-detection accuracy, with an average error of 4% in the range of 0 – 1000 g per cell), and the sampling electronics of it has demonstrated effective crosstalk elimination function. The proposed approach also serves as a methodology for rapid fabrication of flexible electronic devices, enabling high-precision continuous force monitoring across both preloaded (e.g., sitting/lying postures) and non-preloaded scenarios (e.g. contact detection).

To enable better human-machine and human-robot interaction in healthcare applications, there is a need to improve haptic devices, assistive and companion robots to touch humans in a way that can be perceived as comfortable, safe and trusting. Towards this vision, we developed a flexible, wearable matrix force-sensing garment capable of recording dynamic force behaviour of caring touch from four healthcare experts in their natural therapy environment, and enable the touch recipient to provide feedback on the perceived quality of the same touches. Instead of assuming particular touch gestures are caring, we explored the application of the sensing and analysing system to characterise a caring quality of touch across different gestures. We were able to characterise distinctive features for touch aimed for sensory aspects and for moving the body. Our findings demonstrate that caring touch is not limited to specific gestures or a single parameter but is rather characterised by how the touch is performed across multiple features, with deliberateness - the careful and smoothness in the increasing and decreasing of force, emerging as a shared characteristic of caring touch regardless of the specific gesture employed. The study also demonstrates the feasibility of using raw tactile sensor data to assess subjective touch quality.

We invite a visual exploration and critique of imagery that can be (re)produced through open-source models available in Civitai - a repository where creators share and monetize custom text-to-image models. The proliferation of these models contributes to the creation and distribution of Non-Consensual Synthetic Intimate Imagery (NCSII), a digitally-mediated form of image-based sexual abuse that primarily affects women and girls, commonly referred to as "deepfake porn."We examine the practices surrounding the creation and sharing of custom open-source models designed to produce photorealistic content. Through a qualitative content analysis of 510 models and 3800 images, we illustrate the imaginaries about sex, bodies, and gender expressions that models embody and perpetuate, as well as how model creators understand their practices in relation to potential harms and misuse. We discuss pathways for feminist intervention and the care practices we embedded into our research process, and the design of this pictorial.

How should we design for consent? Consent is commonly integrated into products and interactions as binary, static, transactional, and something that should be recorded rather than discussed. Through a Research through Design process, we respond to a call to translate conceptual framings of consent into concrete artifacts and interactions in the context of digital contraception. We contribute with the Consentful Lights, a set of artifacts that enable partners to access intimate fertility data in a co-located setting through play and touch; inviting them to participate in a consentful interaction that is embodied, dynamic, explicit, and shared. Through an in-the-lab exploration of the Consentful Lights, we find that they have the potential to nurture a consentful moment and allow for deterring non-consensual access to intimate data. We conclude with a discussion on the need to pluralize the design of consentful interactions and a reflection on embedding feminist values into design artifacts.

Menstrual experiences are shaped by many different stakeholders, entities, and the broader socio-cultural context, or in other words, the ecological systems surrounding a menstruator. We explore what it means to take an ecological approach in studying and designing menstrual technologies. We translated and adapted Ecological Systems Theory (EST) for menstrual wellbeing and packaged the outcome in the form of a socio-ecological Canvas, accompanied by written examples and a set of prompts to facilitate engagement. We invited ten experts to engage with the Canvas in reflective workshops, which informed its further refinement. These sessions highlighted the Canvas' generative value, fostering critical reflection on how design choices are shaped by and ripple across layers of influence. With this translational research, we invite HCI researchers and practitioners to critically reflect on the ecologies they study and design for, envisioning both aspired versions of existing realities and realities that do not exist yet.

What is a robot, and who gets to decide? As robots evolve beyond metallic humanoids into drones, inflatable architectures, shape-changing materials, AI agents, and garments, the category itself is breaking apart. Human-Computer Interaction and Human-Robot Interaction are not just responding to this shift, they are actively reshaping it. With its focus on interaction, embodiment, proxemics, aesthetics, and lived experience, HCI offers unique tools to interrogate and redefine the essence of robotics. This two-session workshop brings together researchers, designers, and provocateurs to map emerging definitions, challenge disciplinary boundaries, and build a research roadmap for the future of HCI-driven relational robotics. Together, we will explore what robots are becoming and what they could be when interaction takes center stage.

CONTENT WARNING: This paper discusses image-based sexual abuse. Technological advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have made it easy to generate and distribute Non-Consensual Synthetic Intimate Imagery (NCSII); images and videos that depict people's voices, faces, or bodies in intimate or sexually explicit scenarios. The creation and distribution of NCSII is a form of image-based sexual abuse that primarily affects marginalized people. We present Photo BOO-th, an interactive installation that invites attendees to encounter NCSII of themselves, resulting in a creepy, visceral, and affective experience. We designed Photo BOO-th to critique, raise awareness, and foster societal discussions around consent, image-based sexual abuse, and the role of technology in enabling harm. Following a Research through Design approach, we unpack design events that reveal some of the tensions and considerations in designing Photo BOO-th. We conclude with a discussion around designing creepy interactions in sensitive contexts, designing with and against the uncertainties in generative AI, and a reflection on vulnerability when designing creepy interactions.

Haptic technologies have advanced rapidly, yet exploration of robotic touch remains dominated by replicating realistic environmental cues or hand gestures, which narrows the design space and risks social resistance. This paper argues for alternatives: grounded in the notion of “otherness” from human-robot interaction (HRI), we propose treating robotic touch’s inherent otherness as a design quality. Instead of being a limitation in pursuing realism, otherness can be embraced to elicit ambiguity and provoke alternative interpretations, fostering expressive and evocative robotic touch design. To develop this perspective, we analyze inspirational art and design precedents and four design research cases through a reflective Research through Design (RtD) approach. Through this analysis, we articulate a set of design languages structured around why otherness matters for touch meaning-making, how it can be shaped through design strategies, and where it can be embedded within robotic touch systems. We conclude by reflecting on the tensions and risks involved in designing robotic touch with otherness in mind.

As haptic interfaces integrate more seamlessly into wearables and everyday environments, they increasingly require actuators that are soft, thin, silent, and energy efficient. However, conventional motors and temperature-responsive polymers often struggle to deliver these properties due to their bulky form factors and high power consumption. High-Voltage Electrostatic Actuators (HVEAs), which generate force by applying an electric field to localized charge concentrations using high voltages and ultra-low currents, have recently emerged as a compelling alternative due to their fast, silent, and low-power operation within highly customizable and compliant form factors. This paper presents a focused review of HVEAs for haptics, examining four major classes: electrostatic switchable adhesives, dielectric elastomer actuators, soft electrohydraulic actuators, and electrokinetic pumps. For each class, we describe their mechanisms that enable haptic output; characterize their band widths, force densities, and spatial scalability; and evaluate their versatility for rendering cutaneous and kinesthetic feedback across wearable and world-grounded interfaces. Through this cross-technology analysis, we identify common design constraints and emerging strategies for improving ergonomics, streamlining fabrication, and integrating self-sensing. We conclude by out lining where HVEAs are uniquely positioned to advance haptic interaction and highlighting key research directions needed to translate these technologies into practical systems.