About CORE – Discover the COmpendium of RElatedness Technologies
CORE is a free-access, interactive database designed for researchers and designers, to explore relatedness technologies in a structured and engaging way. The comprehensive collection encompasses concepts and prototypes that have been explicitly designed to promote relatedness (i.e., emotional closeness, intimacy, and connectedness between people in a social relationship across distance). It includes a diverse set of technologies.
Inspiration and Insights for Designers and Researchers
CORE provides an accessible way to explore the diversity and trends in relatedness technologies and to navigate this field. Whether for inspiration, detailed exploration of specific topics like input modalities, strategies, or ethics, or finding relevant work, CORE is a comprehensive resource for you.
The CORE Database
- Currently contains 294 distinct concepts and prototypes, represented by 296 database entries, based on 258 paper records published in the ACM Digital Library between 2010 and May 2026.
- Started with 241 concepts and prototypes in total, growing by 53 distinct concepts and prototypes in the last two years.
- Technologies are described with key data and systematically categorized by target population, theoretical grounding, design, evaluation, and ethics.
- Relevant papers identified using PRISMA, a methodology for systematic literature reviews.
- Updated annually.
Please note that two technologies, CoRoot and Onni, are listed twice because more detailed research articles were published as part of the updates. This should be taken into account when analyzing the corpus.
Updates to CORE
September 2026
The second update of the CORE database adds 34 new concepts or prototypes.
It includes 31 papers in total from the ACM Digital Library between June 1, 2025, and May 31, 2026. Of these, 30 publications introduced new concepts or prototypes, while one additional paper was added for an already included technology, Onni, providing a more detailed evaluation.
These papers were identified using the same keywords as in Wenhart et al. (2024). Twenty of the 474 records were excluded in the first screening step because they were workshops, meet-ups, keynotes, or similar formats. In the second step, 454 publications were examined, and 346 that were clearly off-topic or not matching the inclusion and exclusion criteria (see Wenhart et al., 2024) were excluded. The third step involved screening abstracts and titles, resulting in the exclusion of 63 publications. The remaining 45 papers were then assessed through full-text reading.
November 2025
The first update of the CORE database includes newly published papers from the ACM digital library between June 1, 2024, and May 31, 2025, identified using the same keywords (see Wenhart et al., 2024).
In the first screening step, three publications were excluded because they were "full books." In the second step, the titles of all 354 publications were examined, and 109 that were clearly off-topic were excluded. In the third step, two researchers screened the abstracts and titles independently according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria (see Wenhart et al., 2024). This yielded a list of 56 papers, which were then assessed through full-text reading. Eighteen publications were ultimately included in the corpus, containing 20 concepts or prototypes added to the CORE database.
One of the additional publications is a research paper providing a more detailed evaluation of a technology that was already included in the previous database. In total, the CORE database contained 261 related technologies after this update.