An emotional comfort product using touch-The possibility

Background In today's complex and rapidly changing society, people need emotional and physical comfort. It is known that touch is beneficial for the emotional comfort of animals and humans. Many people consider comfort objects as essential to their mental and emotional well-being. The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the possibility of the touch product that provides emotional comfort. Methods This paper proposes a concept design of an emotional comfort product that imitates a mother's hand on the back of the user. To verify the effects of the comfort product, a prototype has been developed and an experiment has been conducted using the prototype. The experiment tests the hypothesis: Relaxation using the product results in a more comfortable emotional response when compared to typical relaxation. The experiment considers two data groups of stress levels: typical-rest and touch-rest. Results Mental stress increased in both 'stress' phases and decreased in the 'rest' phases. The mean stress level of the 'touch-rest' phase was significantly lower than the mean stress level of the 'typical-rest' phase. Conclusions The aim of this study is to identify the possibility of touch products that provide emotional comfort. In the experiment of this study, we observed that a touch product prototype helped lower the stress level.