Emotional responses of tactile icons: Effects of amplitude, frequency, duration, and envelope

This paper is concerned with emotional responses of tactile icons. Using three sets of tactile icons in which four physical parameters-amplitude, frequency, duration, and envelope-were systematically varied, we estimated their valence and arousal scores in a perceptual experiment with 24 participants. Results showed that the four parameters have clear relationships to the emotional responses of tactile icons. Our tactile icons spanned to a large region in the valence-arousal space, but they did not elicit very positive-relaxing or very negative-relaxing emotional responses. These findings provide the design guidelines of tactile icons that have desired emotional properties.