Relatedness Technologies: An Online Compendium and Systematic Review

Over the past decades, numerous concepts and prototypes for fostering emotional connections across distance (relatedness technologies) have been proposed. This has made it challenging for researchers and designers in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) to maintain a comprehensive overview and effectively build on previous work. To address this, we conducted a systematic literature search (PRISMA) and collected 241 concepts and prototypes (2010-2024). We organized this corpus according to key aspects: (1) target population, (2) theoretical grounding, (3) design, (4) evaluation, and (5) ethics. Based on this, we developed the “COmpendium of RElatedness Technologies” (CORE), an open-access, searchable online database that provides researchers and practitioners with a reliable repository to inform future work. In addition, we present a systematic review of the corpus, revealing that despite its long tradition work on relatedness technologies remains characterized by limited theoretical grounding, lack of robust empirical evidence of effects, and insufficient attention to ethical considerations.