Freshly squeezed touch into bits - towards a haptic design palette

Haptic interfaces are felt by many to have the potential to enhance communication and interaction via the computer - enabling affective expressive interpersonal communication and enriching interaction with virtual worlds by haptic feedback. Still, what exactly this potential is and how we can design in order to fully appreciate it is topic of contemporary debate. My contribution to this debate shall be to place some of the current developments into a philosophical and cultural context, to introduce social science based methodologies which will hopefully help broaden the discussion, resulting in a greater scope of input (from other disciplines). Through semiotic analysis we can predict meaning making in haptic communication. The Haptic Box study demonstrates our cultural associations with textures. The PinKom study investigates spontaneous forming of communication codes with a low-tech haptic device.