Putting the feel in ’look and feel‘

TLDR

Commercially available haptic devices make touch a realistic solution for various interaction design challenges. The study investigates whether touch can reduce visual overload on conventional desktops. A two‑phase experiment used the PHANToM haptic device to test four haptic augmentations in a targeting task and a searching‑scrolling task. Haptic augmentations did not speed task completion but lowered error rates and perceived workload, suggesting benefits for interface design.

Abstract

Haptic devices are now commercially available and thus touch has become a potentially realistic solution to a variety of interaction design challenges. We report on an investigation of the use of touch as a way of reducing visual overload in the conventional desktop. In a two-phase study, we investigated the use of the PHANToM haptic device as a means of interacting with a conventional graphical user interface. The first experiment compared the effects of four different haptic augmentations on usability in a simple targeting task. The second experiment involved a more ecologically-oriented searching and scrolling task. Results indicated that the haptic effects did not improve users performance in terms of task completion time. However, the number of errors made was significantly reduced. Subjective workload measures showed that participants perceived many aspects of workload as significantly less with haptics. The results are described and the implications for the use of haptics in user interface design are discussed.