This TED Talk features designer and engineer Keith Kirkland, recorded live at TED Residency 2018.

Do you remember your first kiss or that time you burned the roof of your mouth on a hot slice of pizza?

What about playing tag or ducked up goose as a child?

These are all instances where we're using touch to understand something.

And it's the basis of haptic design.

Haptic means of or relating to the sense of touch,

and we've all been using that our entire lives.

I was working on my computer when my friend,

seeing me hunched over typing,

walked over behind me.

She put her left thumb into the left side of my lower back

while reaching her right index finger around to the front of my right shoulder.

Instinctively, I sat up straight.

In one quick and gentle gesture,

she had communicated how to improve my posture.

The paper I was working on at that very moment

centered around developing new ways to teach movement using technology.

I wanted to create a suit that could teach a person Kung Fu.

But I had no idea how to communicate movement

without an instructor being in the room.

And in that moment, it became crystal clear.

Touch.

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