Sensory Perception & Interaction Research Group

Vibrotactile (VT) display is becoming a standard component of informative user experience, where notifications and feed- back must convey information eyes-free. However, effective design is hindered by incomplete understanding of relevant perceptual qualities. To access evaluation streamlining now common in visual design, we introduce proxy modalities as a way to crowdsource VT sensations by reliably communi- cating high-level features through a crowd-accessible chan- nel. We investigate two proxy modalities to represent a high- fidelity tactor: a new VT visualization, and low-fidelity vi- bratory translations playable on commodity smartphones. We translated 10 high-fidelity vibrations into both modalities, and in two user studies found that both proxy modalities can com- municate affective features, and are consistent when deployed remotely over Mechanical Turk. We analyze fit of features to modalities, and suggest future improvements.