Tattered Teddies and Pentagram Charms: How People Use Touchable Comfort Objects and What This Means for Designing Affective Haptic Systems

Many people use physical objects to self-calm and regulate difficult emotions. Studies evaluating the effectiveness of Touchable Comfort Objects (TCOs) imbued with haptic expressivity, affect awareness, and adaptive support have been primarily lab-based, so we know little about underlying user needs and real-world practices. We asked 132 participants about their favorite TCO: how they use it, where it helps (or fails), and what they would value or avoid in a technology-enhanced TCO. Our survey analysis, based on a proposed data-validated dimensional space, reveals that people choose TCOs as much for emotional significance as for physical soothing, engage with them multiple times daily, and about half desire deeper support for emotion awareness, social-emotional agency, and communication facilitation. We identified four profiles (Physical Soothers, Frodo Fidgeters, Sentimental Functionalists, Nostalgic Comfort-Seekers) that capture diverse patterns. We further contribute a dataset with an interactive visualization, and describe TCO design opportunities to support researchers and designers.