Iced Chest

I had designed a system to cool down the body for mental health support. It is always nice to see how such system can be used in another context such as the Nike Lab that designs innovative garments for athletes. One of the product, that I found in the Print edition of Fast Company Magazine, is a jacket that cools down the body. Discovering that performance falls off drastically when core body temperature hits 103 degrees, the Nike lab designed a vest that slows the rise of core body temperature. It is simply filled in with water, then frozen overnight. The vest is meant to be wear an hour prior to competition.


Screenshot from the Nike designer story

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

My contribution in the field of fashionable technology!

I had previously mentioned the book Fashionable Technology, edited by Sabine Seymour in which I present my work on fashion garments designed in the context of technology -including the Touch Sensitive apparel developed with Yasmine Abbas. The book is available on Amazon and I recently received my copy!

Here are the pages of my contribution and the book itself features outstanding designers. I will try to report about them soon !!!

Abstract: The interplay of electronic textiles and wearable technology, wearables for short, and fashion, design and science is a highly promising and topical subject. Offered here is a compact survey of the theory involved and an explanation of the role technology plays in a fabric or article of clothing. The practical application is explained in detail and numerous illustrations serve as clarification. Over 50 well-known designers, research institutes, companies and artists, among them Philips, Burton, MIT Media Lab, XS Labs, New York University, Hussein Chalayan, Cute Circuit or International Fashion Machines are introduced by means of their latest, often still unpublished, project, and a survey of their work to date. Given for the first time is a list of all the relevant information on research institutes, materials, publications etc. A must for all those wishing to know everything about fashionable technology.

->Buy the book<-

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

A portent of human augmentation

Greasy Spoon, 2007 by Brian Walker

In our cyborg world, I think it would be nice if prosthesis could mean expanding human skills or on a contrary re-creating fragile and powerless human sculptures.

Examples of prostheses

Researchers explored the ability of the skin to acquire and process information rivaling our senses of sight and hearing. The e-skin lab researches on tactile interfaces consisting both of sensors and actuators: wearable artificial skins as a navigation aid in space.

The Rheo Knee made by Ossur adapts to an individual's walking style by detecting 1,000 times every second the knee's position and the load applied to the limb. The user gets the proper amount of resistance for every step.
Via wired

Victhom's urinary implant, a catheter-free, fully implanted pacemaker for the bladder. If trials go well, it could help 800 million people worldwide with bladder dysfunctions caused by spinal cord injury.

Durom™ Hip Resurfacing a joint replacement system that offers "freedom" of movement.

The cyberhand gives amputees the ability to use thought to move and grasp naturally, even to feel whatever the device touches.

A nanotechnology developed at MIT can "knit" together damaged neurons. Researchers have already restored sight to rodents and they believe the technique might also help repair injured spinal cords

Penn State developed the first fully implantable artificial heart, and in 2000 AbloMed acquired rights to further develop the technology. It is FDA approved only for emergency use and the company hopes to have broader approval by 2008. Eventually, researchers hope it can be a long-term solution for heart failure patients.

Current research on technological prostheses by Hugh Herr -director of the bio mechatronics group at the MIT Media Laboratory- transforms the perception a person wearing a prosthesis has of his artificial body part. While the mechanical properties of conventional passive prostheses remain fixed with walking speed and terrain, this research explores the prosthesis not just as a passive object, but also as an extension of the body. The prosthesis enables additional mechanical energy for forward propulsion of an ankle as well as controlling the ankle joint impedance.

The rehabilitation institute of Chicago made a biohybrid arm that allows amputees to move the prosthetic by thought alone.

For patients who have lost the use of their arms, scientists at the Cleveland FES Center are developing functional electrical stimulation systems.

Harvard and Massachisetts General Hospital researchers are developing an implantable artificial electrolarynx communication system for patients who have had a complete laryngectomy. The technology includes a neural interface and hands-free control of a natural sounding voice prosthesis.

Advanced Bionics made a cochlear implant that sends sounds directly to the auditory nerve instead of amplifying sound like a regular hearing aid.

IIP technologies and Intelligent Medical Implants made a retinal implant that bridges and replaces the processing function of a defective retina. Using it some blind persons can regain partial vision and orientation, even in unfamiliar surroundings.

A silicon hippocampus replacement could eventually replace damaged areas of the brain. Currently being developed by scientists at the University of Southern California.

Cyberkinetics created Braingate, a neuroprosthetic system with a patch that attaches directly to neurons in the brain to sense electrical signals. The sensor sends signals that can move a computer cursor or flip a switch.

Living bacteria have been incorporated into an electronic circuit to produce a supersensitive humidity sensor. Similar devices could one day be made that take greater advantage of living organisms, perhaps even using bacteria's energy systems to power electrical devices. Via We make money not art.

Microsoft Research filed a patent on power and data transmission through the human body. The human body is used as a conductive medium, which distributes power and/or data by coupling a power source to the human body via a first set of electrodes. In this case, the body acts as a computer network.


Don't forget to check out the insightful Prosthetic Impulse: From a Posthuman Present to a Biocultural Future

The prosthesis is not a mere extension of the human body; it is the constitution of this body qua “human.”
—Bernard Steigler,Technics and Time


Natalie Portman by freaking news.

Cooling down or heating up the body

At MIT, Tangible Media Research Group, we created Cool Me Down, a flexible fabric wrap with electronic heat pumps and metallic sinks that generates a cooling sensation. we originally designed the system for the treatment of schizophrenia within a care-giving facility. Conducting case studies at a local hospital, we discovered that this technology could be used to accompany usual treatment for other mental conditions.


Throughout the research I explored ways of heat synchronization with the body instead of triggering artificial heat independently from the body. I recently found a fascinating product CoreControl developed by researchers Dennis Grahn and H. Craig Heller.

Problem: "Overheating is a serious concern when exercising in hot environments, wearing insulative clothing, or during high intensity activity. CoreControl can be used to effectively remove heat from the body in a variety of settings."

Solution: "CoreControl TM powered by RTX cools you quickly and safely from the inside out. With patented, cutting-edge technology, it rapidly cools your body core first, unlike ice packs, vests, and misting fans, which cool you from the outside in. CoreControl enables you to consistently perform at your peak."


CoreControl diagram by Nigel Holmes, from Just Cool It's article in Stanford Magazine.

CoreControl's web site

Scarf with electrically operated massager

Scarf with electrically operated massager United States Patent 6537235, by Connor, Clara (Fountain Valley, CA, US) and Busto, Ernest J. (Cypress, CA, US), March 2003.

A combination massager and scarf assembly having a number of electrical motors secured in a flexible casing, which flexible casing is removably secured in the interior of the scarf. The scarf is wrapped around the flexible casing and the motors in the casing are electrically connected to a control box having an A.C. or D.C. power supply to actuate the electrical motors. The control box includes a knob to regulate the speed of vibration of the motors.

Secret under my skin

Today I met with Valerie Bugmann who works on the e-Skin project. She shared her ideas about the perception and simulation of touch for visually impaired persons.

I discovered her performance works and especially liked Secret under my skin. "With the Skin-to-skin communication the body stands as a medium between the technology and the world. In the performance, the participant exteriorizes inner thoughts by inputting them into the keyboard and interiorizes them into the body again with the use of Skin-to-skin communication for the purpose of transmitting them personally by touch to the performer."

The performance takes place in the room of secrets where a skin-to-skin communication network is employed. Here, the performer and the space await the opportunity to become alive through the interaction with the participant who comes to intimately confess/convey a secret by touch. A lighted keyboard floating in the darkness invites the participant to type a secret into its glowing keys. Once typed out, by simply touching the keyboard the secret is reintroduced into the participant’s body in the form of its new physicality – an electric wave. The secret, now flowing from the keyboard into the participant’s body is ready to be further transmitted/confessed to the performer by touch. Once skin-to-skin contact is established with the performer, the participant will be able to see his/her secret revealed on a wearable display on the performer’s body; the participant is then confronted with a very intimate part of him/herself. Despite the secret being displayed on the performer, it remains unread by anyone expect the participant, or has the performer – this almost inert object of inscription, desire and redemption - actually become aware of the secret through the transmission?

Skin-to-skin communication, as a suitable technology to express intimate thoughts, generates an intense effect as we recognize ourselves as part of the other through touch. Secret under my skin brings together different notions and implications of touch in this confession-like context, exploring new behaviors and novel parameters of social interaction that can develop out of this contact.

A wearable artificial skin

"Our own skin and hair is the largest organ of the human body: a tactile reactive interface which special metaphorical connotations of communication and sensitivity." M. Lappe and J. Holt.

The e-Skin project aims at developing a novel type of wearable interface which mimics the sensory capabilities of the human skin. The interface consists of a multilayered flexible hightech textile and senses stimuli both on its outside and inside surface. At the same time the interface possesses actuation mechanisms to provide tactile feedback through its inside and outside surfaces.

"The ability of the skin to acquire and process information rivals our senses of sight and hearing."

e-Skin is a research initiative to create an interface based on the modalities of the human skin (temperature, vibration, pressure, proprioception). It is a tactile interface consisting both of sensors and actuators, a wearable artificial skin and a navigation aid in space.

Touch: a meaning system socially and culturally located

Today, I met with Anne Cranny-Francis based in the Department of Critical and Cultural Studies at Macquarie University. Her web site is a great ressource of references, hyperlinks to papers related to the meaning of touch.

I presented and discussed my research on touch simulation for persons with neurological and pathological disorders. She works on the touch project to understand touch as a meaning system that is socially and culturally located. "The project is concerned with the diversity and specificity of touch as it is experienced by people in their everyday lives. Touch is one of our fundamental ways of negotiating the world and each other. It is specific to different genders, classes, cultures, ages – for all of whom the same physical touch may mean very different things."

She wrote a paper The Midas Touch to re-think the representation of touch. "Its essential argument is that touch defines our being in the world, so that touch is always already a cultural and political practice."

A must-read paper for me as soon as it is published: somatic technologies

My argument is conducted via a series of encounters: a reading of the figure of Christ’s body in late Middle Ages devotional texts, in which the hybridity of Christ is both celebrated and fetishised; the recent appearance of hybrid and cyborg figures in the Stephen Sommers’ film, Van Helsing (2004) and the excess of religious (mostly Christian) references throughout the film; and a mapping of the homologies between the figures of Christ crucified and Sommers’ representation of Dracula, which suggests their interrelationship. This paper is based in a belief in the inextricable relationship between embodiment and the technologies (material, cultural and political) that generate it, the semiotic density of those technologies, and their iterative deployment to generate new ideas – about technology and about embodiment.

Interactive dresses

Hexagram is an institute for research and creation in media arts and technologies. They present “Indice de l’indifférence: Walking City”, an exposition by Ying Gao.

The vernissage of the latest exposition by Ying Gao, “Indice de l’indiférence : Walking City” an installation featuring her interactive dresses, will take place at Galerie Diagonale on May 31, from 4 pm to 6 pm with the exposition taking place from May 29 to June 9.

Two beautiful examples of breathing dress





More of Ying Gao's work

Enabling musical expression

Rachel's graphical representation of Dan's musical composition

During the H2.0 event, Adam Boulanger, researcher at the Hyperinstruments group with Professor Tod Machover presented their most impressive latest research: enabling musical expression.
Dan Ellsey, who has cerebral palsy, has been composing with the Hyperscore environment for almost two years. Adam developed a head-set and supporting software so that Dan could expressively perform his hyperscore compositions as a soloist. Dan worked closely with the team to perform his “eagle song” using head movements during the event. Rachel Roppolo worked on translating the sensor inputs from Dan into minimal graphics. Zach Watts worked on the curve algorithm to determine the type of shape Dan was making.
The performance was clearly impressive, very detailed and empowered the public.

I later talked to Adam about the project. He explained that the project necessitated a number of important steps. The team initially built on the commercial head tracker that Dan usually uses. However the commercial tracker was unsuccessful for a performance because it is not fast enough and is not reporting continuous data. Adam had to create a continuous head tracker.
Regarding the design aspects of the system, Adam had to work closely with Dan to come up with the algorithm that he needed to get clean data from Dan’s head movements, the team later calibrated the sensors for Dan.
The other step consisted in designing a controller that could run a performance. The team designed a new software that could take Dan’s range of motions and velocity of movement. They also had to do curve analysis to determine the type of shape Dan was making. Adam had to also figure out, based on his piece and movement, how this would be represented as an expression of the piece. The whole process was a discussion back and forth between Dan and the team. The system being done, they went through the piece of music and defined the type of movement needed for expression.

The performance was incredible. I cried, impressed by what the team had achieved.
The speakers were all impressive, I missed a few of them that I have to catch up on the archive. The webcast of the event is available online.


Adam, Dan and Tod

A living sculpture

Aimée Mullins

Today at the fantastic H2.0 event hosted by John Hockenberry and organized by the MIT Media Laboratory, key speakers presented new research initiatives for augmenting mental and physical capability and this to vastly improve the quality of human life.


Pictures from Aimee Mullins's talk

I discovered the inspiring work of Aimée Mullins, that not only is functional but also beautiful. She raises questions on identity and the body, on what it means to loose her lower self. She worked with various artists, designers and modeled for Alexander Mc Queen.


Aimée Mullins, Dazed & Confused, September 1998 by photographer Nick Knight

In Cremaster 3, actress Aimée Mullins wears blades on the soles of her shoes or a white dress and transparent crystal legs.


Cremaster 3

At the end of the H2.0 event Aimée Mullins declared: "people say i have no legs, but I have ten pairs of them and my interaction with them allow me to be a living sculpture"


Aimée' Sculptural legs, photographer: Webb Chappell


Model: Aimée Mullins, photographer: Chris Winget

video

Wearable robotic

Today at the h2.0 event -new minds, new bodies, new identities- Hugh Herr, director of the bio mechatronics group, presented his latest research. I am impressed by his work and fascinated by his own prostheses. He presented the number of persons who could benefit from wearable robotic and wearable attached to the body. From veterans who have parts of their body amputated, to anyone who could be robotically augmented. For instance, with wearable robotic, anyone could wear 100kg in a bag pack and not feel the load because it would be transmitted to the robot.

In Hugh Herr’s research, living muscle tissues are stimulated electrically to get the desired motion response. He presented the motion by mechanics in prostheses developed by the mechatronics group at the MIT media laboratory. The Rheo knee prosthesis allows to reduce the energy consumed in walking, allows to walk downstairs, upstairs, faster and slower. The person who wears the prostheses is controlling the lift. This research is based on nature, on how nature functions and steals from nature for its design.

Hugh Herr’s goal for the next years is to build the first hybrid body or limb by attaching robotic limb to the skeleton, load being transferred to the tissue. One of the main challenges is for the body to create its own seal. The group will develop the next generation of legs, and neurocontrol strategies for a direct control on these prostheses. Hugh Herr mentioned that his group developed the most powerful ankle in the world.

For the Human 2.0 event, John Maeda composed of 24 scribbled personas. I still have not chosen the one I am ...

Social affective touch for robots

My past research on psychohaptics and taptap at the Tangible Media Group, MIT Media Laboratory, involved studying the perception of touch, and how people relate affectively to haptic sensations. Today, Dr Cynthia Breazeal who leads the Robotic Life research group at the MIT Media Laboratory addressed the question of social affective touch. Her main theme is to build cooperative machines that work and learn in partnership with people.
Today at the h2.0 event -new minds, new bodies, new identities- she presented her latest research including the robotic companion. The robotic life group explores social affective touch and develops machine learning algorithms to categorize various sense of touch, from pleasant to annoying ones. Exploring the sense of touch and interpretation of touch by robots is a new area of research.
The robot is designed in the form of a bear, the bear being a universal symbol of comfort. The robot itself is covered of silicone skin to not feel like a machine when hugged. In their first experiments, the robot had local intelligence, local sensing and response, coordination. An operator could communicate with the bear to a 3d bear model on a screen.

Applications behind this work could be for family members to be able to play from everywhere, to bridge the usual generation gap between grandparents and grandchildren, to allow people to remain in contact while separated. This is especially important when a child is spending a day at the hospital alone and what it means for the parents to be able to stay with the child remotely.
Another high vision for this work is to allow collaborative partnership using a remote tutor. Cynthia mentioned that eventually the bear could be highly trained and could offer high quality education to the ones who usually are not exposed to such education.

Touch Sensitive Apparel at Chi 2007

Poster presented at Chi 2007

Our Touch Sensitive apparel is inspired by the vision to leverage stress, comfort, and massage people while they are on the move. When always on the move, as an interview based study has shown, people use technological devices to “tune-out” or express their fear of technology by finding “a place where [their] soul is” . What if objects that people carry with them and even carry on them could offer this sensory comfort that they seem to seek?

More on our Touch Sensitive Apparel.

Inspiration In hypermobile societies, people carry objects, information and goods. They develop habits. The notion of habitus coined by Bourdieu relates to everything that someone does, and in fact defines the individual. The search for comfort, to feel at home (to inhabit space through hab-its, habitus) when on the move defines the populations of our hyper-societies.

Design
Touch·Sensitive is a work-in-progress to develop a series of haptic modules that allow computational massage therapy to be diffused, customized and controlled by people on the move. It provides individuals with a sensory cocoon. Our current prototypes succeeded in defining a flexible structure, a mechanism of diffusion, and a feedback system for alerting and comforting the user through haptic means.
In addition, we propose to integrate machine-learning algorithms to understand the massage needs of the users through the analysis over time of the correlation between the motions of the user, the location of the pressure points, the intensity and qualities of the stimulus. We plan to develop these next steps along with specialists in massage therapy.

Download Chi 2007 WIP paper

Touch Sensitive Apparel was presented at Chi 2007. Enthusiasm, advices, references, and new ideas inspired by the visitors will lead a new prototype this summer.

Do strangers meet?

Drawing and Tag cloud I made for the Kendall T Band

Looking for a site to show Charles Goldman when he is in town, I finally picked the famous Kendall Band - Kepler, Pythagoras, Galileo designed, fabricated and installed by Paul Matisse.
In 1987, Paul Matisse installed in Cambridge, Kendall T Station, the The Kendall Band a musical sculpture. Passengers can move handles located on each platform and will activate hammers that strike the bells. The instruments are suspended in arches between the tracks. Made of aluminum, teak, steel, the band consists of :
· Kepler a 55-inch aluminium ring that hums for five minutes after it is struck by the large teak hammer above it.
· Galileo a sheet of stainless steel that imitates a train roaring in when a train roars in.
· Pythagoras twin sets of eight bells of the type of the new memorial bell in Washington.

The Kendall Sculptures are very much the thing I love to show to a tourist in town. Being a student at MIT, I am not afraid of technical objects, I find them sexy. Bringing technicality into the T station where it is full of machines and the metallic sound resonating with its own voice: the sound of the train, the aluminum as a metal and the reverberation of the vibrato into the station, is exciting. It is definitely unique and as Paul Matisse says: “it is MIT’s baby”.

Social challenge: talk to strangers
It seems contradictory to what my grand ma told me: do not talk to strangers. Well, artists are different, they want things to be different. Paul Matisse wants strangers to talk to each others and maybe meet. He also thinks music can help that to happen. Passengers waiting for their trains can play with the sculpture. Sometimes, strangers can meet: can look at each others, can smile, maybe play together? I believe that one can cut herself from the visuals, but it is harder to do with sounds. So one can notice the change of sounds. Because propagating the sounds throughout the entire station is not directed towards one person, people can then feel free to respond or ignore the gesture. The inside is invaded, but somehow no pressure is put on bringing it outside. One can choose. And sometimes strangers can meet.

Music
The Kepler strikes an F sharp to go with the B minor of the Pythagoras.

Pictures
No picture for this post so you can then fully discover it when you are in Boston!

For more info, read the article Kendall Sculptures Bring Music, Talk to Strangers, The Tech, Volume 115, Number 66, 1996.

Sculpting Behavior

Hayes Raffle not only just had two full academic papers accepted to the first class conference IDC 2007: Interaction design and Children but he is also a talented sculptor and designer. His Super Cilia Skin reflects his aesthetic sensibility and his ongoing passion for kinetic sculpture.

Video

Super Cilia Skin

After co-creating and designing the award-winning ZOOB® building system, Hayes joined the Tangible Media Group at the MIT Media Laboratory and created Topobo, a 3D constructive assembly system with kinetic memory and the ability to record and playback physical motion.
Video



a ZOOB® creature


a Topobo creature

If you happen to be in the bay area, don't miss Hayes' talk, open to the public, that he is giving at the Berkeley Institute of Design, UC Berkeley, March 6th, from 1 to 2pm.
Information about his talk.

During the talk, he will explain how with Topobo children can assemble sculptures that dance and walk. He will present Fuzzmail a program that allow children to write a message that unfolds in time. He will show how with Jabberstamp children can embed stories, sounds and voices in their original drawings.

Touch · Sensitive Apparel

What if objects that people carry with them and even carry on them could offer this sensory comfort that they seem to seek?

Together with Yas I have codevelopped a touch-sensitive apparel for massage and sensory therapy. The research focuses on the material - how the structure and the embedded components of the garment participate in pushing its function to become an envelope or cocoon for one's well-being.

Touch·Sensitive is a haptic apparel that allows massage therapy to be diffused, customized and controlled by people while on the move. Made of modular garments, it applies personalized stimuli. Touch·Sensitive aims to provide individuals with a sensory cocoon, a comforting and alerting apparel with a feedback system. Our design for the Touch·Sensitive apparel comes from the observation that people need to sooth their body to protect themselves from everyday aggressions. Touch·Sensitive is a matrix made of clothing elements that allows diffusion of tactile information through heat sensors, mechanically-driven textural sensation and liquid diffusion.

The following is a series of our Low-Fidelity prototypes.

LOW-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE #1

This wired apparel alerts the user by mechanically shrinking the fabric onto specific points of tensions on the body.

LOW-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE #2

The second low-fidelity prototype of Touch·Sensitive is made of buttons with silicone.

LOW-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE #3

Manually inflatable vinyl pockets can be used to receive a comforting pressure

LOW-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE #4

Structure flex

Touch·Sensitive allows the diffusion of tactile information through computational and mechanical technologies. It is a computerized touch therapy apparel whose modular pieces can be integrated within the clothing. We have taken advantage of the growing miniaturization of computational components to integrate them seamlessly within the fabric.

Keep tuned!

-------------------------------------------------------
Touch · Sensitive Apparel work-in-progress 6 pages paper has been accepted to CHI 2007. Come see Yas and I in Saint Jose from April 28-May 3 2007!

Abstract
Touch·Sensitive is a haptic apparel that allows massage therapy to be diffused, customized and controlled by people while on the move. It provides individuals with a sensory cocoon. Made of modular garments, Touch·Sensitive applies personalized stimuli. We present the design process and a series of low fidelity prototypes that lead us to the Touch·Sensitive Apparel.



Download pdf of the paper

Seamless-sensory Interventions

Based on my previous work on haptics for psychotherapy, I am now designing Seamless Sensory Interventions for the treatment of mental and neurological disorders.

My current research proposes haptics as the key to bringing treatment into the social sphere through devices, and providing new ways to mediate between the patient and the therapist both in and outside of therapy. Self-mutilation is a perfect test-case, because of the definitive “physicality” of the symptoms. However, the broader solutions that I am proposing have implications for diseases as diverse as autism, depression, and schizophrenia.

Sleep disorders interventions through technology mediated environment

Exploring the synthesis of temperature deployed through haptic systems, I have found that researchers have previously considered the effects of an electric blanket on sleep stages and body temperature in young healthy men. They conclude that use of a temperature-controlled electric blankets under low ambient temperature may decrease cold stress to support sleep stability and thermoregulation during sleep.

Reference of the paper
Okamoto-Mizuno, Kazue; Tsuzuki, Kazuyo; Ohshiro, Yasushi; Mizuno, Koh (2005) Effects of an electric blanket on sleep stages and body temperature in young men. Ergonomics, Vol. 48 Issue 7, p749.

Based on research on seasonal affective disorders (SAD), designers have also created bedding that synchronizes the body clock. It is a poetic and transparent manner to support patients with seasonal affective disorder in which the insufficience of day-light causes the onset of depression. Designers have also created the SRE - Sleep & Recovery Enhancer. The SRE guide the user through autogenous exercises to lower the stress-level and reduce time to fall asleep.

Classification for haptic actuation technology

Angela Chang refered me to a paper that articulates a need for haptic classification. This is a key paper to understand how to create and distinguish among haptic effects.
An Activity Classification for Vibrotactile Phenomena By Conor O’Sullivan and Angela Chang. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Volume 4129/2006

Abstract

We observe that the recent availability of audio-haptic actuators allow richer vibration content to be available in commercial devices. However, we note that consumers are unable to take advantage of these rich experiences, mainly due to the lack of a descriptive language for vibration. We analyze the current methods for classifying vibrations. We propose a new framework for describing vibrotactile haptic phenomena, based on an organizing the media based on content activity. We describe this naming system, based on Russolo’s families of noise, and address other pertinent issues to introducing vibration content into commercial devices.