 I'm really pleased for us to be able to be here at this webinar today and thanks to Rob and Mel and Andy for inviting the team. So just a little bit about InTouch. So InTouch is a five-year European Research Council project and it examines how touch is digitally re-mediated and really hones in on the social consequences of that for communication interaction. So the reshaping of Touch by COVID-19 is an issue that we've had to engage with across our studies and project methodologies. It's been really disruptive for us. So in response to the pandemic we've had to reframe our methods and really reorientate our analysis. We've had to move our research studies activities and tools online and we've had to bring our research methodologies for Touch into the context of COVID-19 restrictions on social distancing in Touch. And as you can all imagine that's a massive challenge for us. So a key aspect of this reframing has been about taking a long reflective view part of trying to understand change and continuity of Touch which is a key strand throughout the project really. So in relation to the pandemic we've been trying to connect our current case studies because InTouch is a collection of case studies around different touch in different contexts with different technologies. So we've been trying to kind of take this reflective look back and connect our current studies within this moment of COVID with the InTouch studies that we conducted pre-COVID. So collectively these studies have set out to map what if any touch continuities and changes are key for this new social landscape and who knows how temporary or emergent or how permanent some of these changes will come. We're not at that point. We've also sought to describe these emergent evolving touch communicative experiences and practices to identify the social and cultural factors that are in play in the work of this tactile reshaping. So what kind of social norms or practices are kind of coming into this different space and to explore the potential role of digital technologies in this changing landscape of touch. So as you can imagine we've had a lot of journalists and reporters getting in touch with us to say you know what's happening, how's technology going to intervene and help us in this very difficult moment. We've also been trying to identify insights gleaned that might inform the design and development of touch communication technologies. In response to the disruption of COVID we've introduced five new case studies to interrogate the social experiences and narratives of touch in COVID times. So we've done this through a focus on its influence on the place of touch and the digital in the social landscapes of communication with particular attention to how people's experiences are shaping their narratives or practices of touch. This is included for example like a new case study on changing discourses of touch in the news which all of us would have seen like this explosion of articles worrying about touch or wondering about touch. So key to this work has been the amplification of interdisciplinarity in the in touch project. So this has included us fostering interdisciplinary conversations between social science, choreographers and dancers and artists. So it's a way to articulate and promote understanding of people's sensorial experiences of lockdown. We've also been working with computer scientists, engineers to develop a manifesto for design of touch in crisis. So offer a kind of provocative vision to ignite debate and raise awareness, inspire and direct the design of social touch really informed by this moment of COVID. So that gives you kind of overview of some of the the the context that we're working in and about the project and now I'll hand over to Lili and then Ned who are part of the in touch project and who will illustrate some how we've been reframing our methods and how we've been reorientating our analysis in response to COVID-19 through examples from their specific case study work. Lili. Thanks Kerry. Hi everyone. So I'm going to share today how I adapted the design led methods I plan to use in my research on connections between loneliness, touch and digital touch technologies. So in late 2019 my plan had been to conduct a three-part series of research workshops with participants in an adult education context and these workshops would include a range of design led methods which aim to give an accessible tactile and bodily way for participants to engage with emergent ideas and technologies and workshop methods included mapping and rapid prototyping which for those of you who are new to that methods or less familiar involves imagining an idea in 3D using everyday materials like paper and cards and recycled packaging and then in between the workshops participants would be invited to engage with some touch-oriented cultural probes to help develop ideas and facilitate discussions and I'll say more about cultural probes in a moment. So together the workshops and probes aim to support participants to think about the complex areas of loneliness, touch and digital touch in stages. When I set out this research design I'd already facilitated a pilot workshop at the Welcome Collection in November 2019 and I started to put together shared in-situ resources including tactile mood boards which you can see in the bottom left hand corner of the screen and a touchy vocab which together aim to act as prompts to help participants to think about and through touch. But when the first Covid lockdown began in March 2020 it was of course no longer possible to have this shared touch experience through the co-present workshops and at this point I decided to move everything online and I set up a dedicated website which I will say more about in a moment. So moving online in the pandemic also led me to rethink and widen recruitment into three different demographics. These were selected based on a combination of factors for example the fact that people over 70 had been asked to self-isolate but combined with there being one of the most attended to groups in loneliness research traditionally. The younger 18 to 24 group had emerged in more recent loneliness surveys as experiencing higher levels of loneliness and this pattern has continued across the pandemic and then finally with so many people adjusting to working from home an earlier workplace loneliness research having identified those working from home as one of the groups most likely to experience loneliness I also widened recruitment to include them and I ran six workshop series in total between May and December 2020. Because the pandemics reduce who and what we touch and requires so many of us to stay at home it's increased a lot of people's interest in touch and loneliness as well as their motivation and availability to take part in a methodology that does involve quite a big time commitment. One of the main challenges of moving online with how to continue to work with that and give a sense of touch interaction in this new format. This was especially a challenge when it came to the cultural probes I planned to give participants to use at home in between the workshops. For those who are new to cultural probes they're an informal design led method of information gathering which also acts as a way to facilitate participants ideas and discussions. Researchers traditionally prepare tailored physical packs of materials like disposable cameras, pre-addressed and stamped postcards, post-its, images and other bits and these were accompanied by playful or evocative tasks which participants can select from and complete. Before the pandemic I planned to put together packs with some of these more established components like the postcards but also things like for example a touchy feely kit which would be made up of all sorts of materials and textures. But in March last year our knowledge of how the virus spread through touching different surfaces were very limited and so it wasn't ethical to send pro packs out to people. So I thought about how this method which has been traditionally anchored and quite carefully curated and crafted physical tactile packs could be digitally translated and when I researched the tool adaptations of this methods the examples I found were focused on giving participants mobile phones. There weren't very many examples at all but I wanted to maintain the idea of the cultural probes as a pack from which participants could select the tasks they'd wanted to respond to and this was one of the main reasons why I set up the website. So on this slide you can see the probe tasks for week one and I asked participants to select one or two of these each week. I aim to maintain their original essence of being open-ended and evocative however in moving online I was providing the tasks but not the materials to carry them out and participants had to use their own resources and this was also the same for the workshop methods like rapid prototyping. But the adaptation of these methods allowed participants to engage much more with materialities and in-situ touch within their own environments. They often integrated materials or objects with very personal histories so for example participants who selected probe task E to make their workshop maps tactile made highly personalised responses making cuttings for materials they'd held on to for months and sometimes years or they placed objects from their homes on top of their maps. The project also adapted the method of rapid prototyping in the same way. Again the lack of materials provided by a researcher could also produce quite novel outcomes here. The images here show one participant's touch technology prototype, a programmable flexible string with multiple options for tactile sensations and patterns which she later developed through the week two cultural probe tasks. In the online workshops participants sometimes got up to demonstrate objects in their homes as well. On this page you can see a participant feeling a cutting of a velvet skirt that had belonged to her mother then moving on to show how she'd integrated it into her home, her curtains and then to introduce a giant teddy now a source of joy but which she brought many years ago to comfort her in the loneliness of her marriage breakdown. But to summarise the adaptations in my research have included firstly a change relationship to materials so switching from my own resources like the tactile mood boards to drawing on the home resources of participants in the online workshops. Secondly rethinking cultural probes into a digital space as a website. Thirdly recruitment so the pandemic led me to change and widen the number of groups I recruited and it also allowed me to recruit from all over the country and around the world and this was a big shift for me because I had been having some trouble recruiting so recruitment improved for me as some people had more time and the topic of the study held appeal and relevance to the context of the pandemic and then finally moving online enabled participants to share access to their homes if they wanted and I also have a question mark here about participant agency I can't say this for sure as I don't have the full in-person series to compare to but I think participants being situated in their homes and using materials that they had hand gave them more agency and control. Thank you for listening I'll now hand over to Dr Ned Barker. Hi everyone thank you Lily so in contrast to Lily's example of innovatively adapting methods I want to zoom out a little bit and consider some broad broader methodological themes when the first lockdown hit I had completed ethnographic field work in three sites unfortunately plans for the fourth and the last site fell through however after a period of analysis and reorientation the final site was redrawn and sensory interviews were conducted online I'm going to spend the bulk of my time to expanding on this process I'll share some key reflections on what kept the ethnography moving in unexpected but interesting directions the take-home message from sharing these experiences is that COVID does not necessarily have to be seen as an insurmountable interruption to the ethnographic research process instead whilst responding to the rapidly changing research context interruptions can be viewed as an opportunity to productively reorientate the research in ways that ask new questions and stretch the boundaries of the field sites so the ethnography I'm reflecting on today sought to explore the social implications of new forms of robotic touch in industrial contexts two insights motivated this focus firstly many proclaim that we have entered a fourth industrial revolution this revolution is supposed to be marked by a new generation of robots that will increasingly transform industry and lead to deep transformations in social and economic structures and secondly our particular tactile interests were sparked through an engagement with cultural history where scholars have applied a sensory lens to understand the social implications of previous industrial revolutions in our readings of these texts the role of touch and how touch practices are altered through new technologies seem to matter greatly especially when trying to get to grips with the social and sensory character of industrial work against this backdrop we were really keen to enter the shop floor to get a closer look and feel of how touch has been reshaped through a so-called new generation of robots we designed a multi-sided sensory ethnography that would do this and identified four sites based on technologies of interest three of which are depicted here firstly we selected tactile tele robots seen in the image on the left because they offer new ways to touch at a distance and potentially removing workers from hazardous environments secondly we chose artificially intelligent robots such such as max AI in the corner of this middle photo this is able to autonomously identify waste materials and separate them for recycling and finally we were interested in collaborative robots that work alongside human labourers and sometimes on shared tasks this co-bot as they are called was integrated into a glass factory the analytical work of the ethnography was initially charged with tracing important social and sensory themes that cut across these disparate sites in line with this and central to the methodology was the aim to become a tactile apprentice to learn about and through touch within social and sensory context three main ethnographic methods were therefore fine-tuned towards generating tactile descriptions leading to these insights again on the left we have a close observation of touch field notes were fleshed out around meaningful touch encounters not only were human robot tactile interactions recorded but a wider lens was also applied to observe the entire tactile landscape and to locate a range of touch encounters within the social and sensory context in the middle we have participating in touch that's me picking waste this method sought to gain direct experience of touch within those contexts and on the right we have sensory interviews where possible unstructured conversations would take place during touch encounters in more structured interviews observed tactile moments would form the basis of questioning that probe participants experiences further these three methods guided the collection the data collection and reflect the essence of our methodology the fourth site was anticipated to focus on the construction industry where workers have started to wear exoskeletons that enhance their bodily capabilities but unfortunately this fieldwork was no longer possible as the disappointed subsided we began to reflect on the nature of the interruption and what it meant for the ongoing project yes there was an immediate change in circumstance that clearly stopped some possibilities that the context in which the ethnography was situated was also dramatically changing the pandemic disrupts industrial and social orders more than ever new forms of robots were being presented and discussed as vital to navigate the future of industry ethnographers should continually locate local understandings within broader structures and trends and therefore our ongoing analysis started elevating themes that connected with the future of touch in industry these themes had emerged in the completed fieldwork by this stage were largely overlooked in the glass factory in the robotics lab and in the waste management centre both participants and artifacts exposed the importance of these future imaginaries this mug in the centre provides just one visual representation of a rhetoric of the future was encountered when contemplating how to respond to the change in research context the imagined future of touch in industry was elevated to form a new site using completed fieldwork as a springboard we refresh research questions and identified new participants that would offer alternative but complementary perspectives on the future of touch in industry I want to highlight four key aspects that facilitated this reorientation the first point I want to make is the importance of taking time whilst multi-sided ethnography insists that the ethnographer must identify and trace themes between contexts because of the vast-paced nature of doing fieldwork periphery and unexpected threads can easily be missed or neglected not being able to continue his plan created a useful opportunity to return to the analysis with fresh eyes the second point is related to this that is to embrace the agile character of ethnography and the range of methods at your disposal ethnography in general but especially multi-sided ethnography emphasises the importance of remaining open to new themes and questions it involves a continual redrawing of site boundaries and can encompass a range of qualitative as well as quantitative methods the third step that we considered central to this reorientation was looking back to look forward what I've described might appear to be a radical departure but I really must stress that it wasn't a new piece of research what merge was rooted in the completed fieldwork and the data collected in the new foresight was analysed in relation to themes that stretched across the ethnography and finally because the research was taken in new directions we argue that it's really important to keep the essence of the method alive as you move forward this is important so our approach wasn't flexed beyond breaking points this brings me to my concluding reflections I attempted to keep the essence of the tactile apprentice approach alive by moving sensory interviews online I want to accentuate the point that this shifting method is an outside of the scope of ethnography when ethnography is understood as a methodology and not a set list of methods built around traditional forms of participant observation to ground speculations of a future touch to their sensory and social dynamics two techniques informed the interview protocols these were demonstrations and disruptions at planned stage and also in opportune moments the participants were invited to physically demonstrate their descriptions of touch during these demonstrations I could mimic the actions and gain a felt sense of what they're imagining participating in touch in this way helped me to effectively probe these actions through more grounded and felt questions I also employed a strategy to disrupt touch imaginaries one example of doing this was to use footage from completed fieldwork I selected examples where touch experiences and functions broke down this was useful to rupture promissory rhetoric stat and to bring to the focus the technical challenges of creating smooth forms of touch for industrial purposes so my take home message in in closing is that when doing fieldwork and plans are interrupted there's also opportunities to reimagine what the research is and what it can be the key steps for us to productively reorientate this study included taking time embracing agility looking back to look forward and keeping the essence of the methodology alive I'm now going to hand back to Kerry who's going to synthesize some of the main points from our presentation thanks lily thanks Ned you can see I'm the luckiest PI in the world to have such brilliant researchers and it's really lovely at this time where it's really hard to showcase our work to have the opportunity to do that so thank you lily and Ned I think they've demonstrated for us really well some of the ways in which the in touch team are reframing our methods and reorientating our analysis and response to COVID and to summarize this has involved us all working together to have this sense of a productive reorientation working with the disruption of COVID-19 where possible obviously that's not always possible so we don't want to be too kind of polyangorous about it all but we have found ways to do that and I can know you can see that that would have been difficult in both these cases and we've done that by flexing stretching and adapting our methods by experimenting with how to keep what both lily and Ned have talked about keep the essence of a method alive to understand what for ourselves what the essence of a method might be and then to experiment with with how to keep that going so for example both Ned and lily have developed ways of what we are calling proxy feelers as a way to access the sensory but also explore new ways of being present as we all are now in this webinar new ways of being present as researchers and reconsidering the ethics of touches lily touched on in her in her discussion of cultural probes really thinking about what what new ethical issues they throw up for us and trying to use those for research insights as well and taking this long reflective view back and forth to the past the present and as Ned says looking forward to the futures as well so avoiding in that sense we're trying to avoid a really reactionary response to COVID and to kind of put it in some kind of historical social context so in summary we're working to design research that responds to the new touch landscape that we find ourselves in and to use this period to forge ahead with some new methodological advances across the project and if you want to find out more about our endeavors please do follow us on twitter and take a take a look at the project website as well which sets out all of the project case studies two of which Ned and lily have shared with you today thanks very much