Sensory Perception & Interaction Research Group

University of British Columbia

HapTurk: Online Crowdsourcing Haptic Feedback

Start Year: 
2015
End Year: 
2016

The purpose of this project is to investigate the viability of methods that could be used to crowdsource feedback regarding haptic effects. Crowdsourcing services such as Amazon's Mechanical Turk could be used to alleviate many issues in the haptic design process such as participant recruitment and compensation. 

However, in order to take advantage, there needs to exist appropriate "proxy modalities"  that can be used to remotely represent the original haptic effect's physical and affective qualities. 

The primary project goals involve the design, development, and evaluation of different proxy modalities eg. new visual representations of vibrations, "lower fidelity" smartphone vibration effects, etc.  that could be experienced without the need for pariticpants to have access to high-end haptic devices such as the C2 tactor. 

If successful, informative feedback regarding haptic effects for a variety of contexts and devices (eg. wearables) could be employed to help haptic designers create more useful and meaningful effects. 

 

Publications: