The housing 1632 is a rigid casing that encloses and protects a portion of the cutaneous actuator 1602 and the electronic circuitry 1608 coupled to the cutaneous actuator 1602. The housing 1632 directly contacts the body 1618 of a user wearing the haptic communication device 1630. The housing 1632 may be in the shape of a cylinder, a cone, a cube, a prism, etc. The cutaneous actuator 1602 is partly located within the housing 1632 to generate haptic vibrations 1616 corresponding to actuator signals received by the cutaneous actuator 1602. The actuator signals may be generated by various methods as described with respect to FIGS. 9F, 14A, 14C, 17A, and 18A. The haptic vibrations 1616 communicate haptic output (e.g., words in a haptic lexicon) to a body 1618 of a user via the skin when the user is wearing the haptic communication device 1600. The communication of the haptic output may be performed by various methods as described with respect to FIGS. 8C, 9A, 10E, 15B, and 15C. As described above with respect to FIG. 1, the cutaneous actuator 1602 may be a voice coil, a linear resonant actuator (LRA), an eccentric rotating mass actuator, a piezoelectric actuator, an electroactive polymer actuator, a shape memory alloy actuator, a pneumatic actuator, a microfluidic actuator, or an acoustic metasurface actuator.