Loneliness, touch, and its digital mediation

Emerging technologies that digitally mediate the sense of touch promise to mitigate loneliness, however we know little about the role of touch in everyday experiences of loneliness. Broader loneliness research has traditionally emphasised it as a mental, rather than embodied experience, while research concerning touch and digital touch is limited in the contexts brought into focus. This thesis aims to expand understanding of the relationships between touch, digital touch, and loneliness; it explores how people frame touch and digital touch in experiences of loneliness, and considers how these felt narratives relate to those of digital designers, artists, researchers, and commercial companies. The thesis develops an interdisciplinary methodology of open-ended and speculative design methods to investigate this topic, and asks what insights these methods might provide. It brings together workshops, mapping, rapid prototyping, and ‘digital’ probes, and an ‘in-the-wild’ study with cultural probes and semi-structured interviews. This methodology is adapted for online research in response to Covid-19 physical distancing regulations. Data collection took place over two years with 35 participants, sampled from three demographics: aged 18-24, 25-55 working from home, and over 70s. This data was analysed thematically. Multidimensional narratives were generated that illustrate wide-ranging experiences of loneliness and relationships to touch and digital touch – this methodology supported participants to develop these narratives over time. This thesis makes four key contributions to social research and human computer interaction. First, it contributes four expanded overarching narratives: uncertainty and agency; bodily, sensory experience; novel remote digital touch communication; and implicit and explicit commodification. Second, it contributes a novel combination of methods and resources for the study of this topic, advanced through online adaptations. Third, it provides considerations for the design of future digital touch technologies that address loneliness. Fourth and finally, it offers an agenda for future methodological development and empirical research