Our main goal is to design an interpersonal interaction device involving the tactile perception. Starting from observations on subjects manipulating tangible mock-ups we observed to main strategies in the way they act to establish the contact with their partner: either they adopted an 'engaged' or a 'receptive' attitude. Using a minimalist approach and a very simplified 1D interaction space we conducted user experiments to try to design tactile avatars that would fit with these observed strategies. ©2008 HFT2008.