Sensory Perception & Interaction Research Group

Haptic feedback has a role to play in mobile display of information, with its potential for enriching technology interactions, offloading vision, and providing low-attention or eyes-free communication with networked information and other users. However, without careful and perceptually informed design, it will become just another annoying distraction; and our current knowledge of both haptic perception and the impact of its processing on multimodal attention is in its infancy. This position paper outlines opportunities and pitfalls of designing mobile haptic interactions, with emphasis on abstract communication via haptic icons – brief, informative tangible signals. Past and ongoing projects relating to this effort are described, and illustrated using usage scenarios.