New parameters for tacton design

ABSTRACT

Tactons (tactile icons) are structured vibrotactile messages which can be used for non-visual information presentation. Information can be encoded in a set of Tactons by manipulating parameters available in the tactile domain. One limitation is the number of available usable parameters and research is ongoing to find further effective ones. This paper reports an experiment investigating different techniques (amplitude modulation, frequency, and waveform) for creating texture as a parameter for use in Tacton design. The results of this experiment show recognition rates of 94% for waveform, 81% for frequency, and 61% for amplitude modulation, indicating that a more effective way to create Tactons using the texture parameter is to employ different waveforms to represent roughness. These results will aid designers in creating more effective and usable Tactons.

REFERENCES

• 1: Blattner, M. M., Sumikawa, D. A. and Greenberg, R. M., Earcons and Icons: Their Structure and Common Design Principles, in Human Computer Interaction 4(1) (1989), 11--44.
• 2: Stephen Brewster , Lorna M. Brown, Tactons: structured tactile messages for non-visual information display, Proceedings of the fifth conference on Australasian user interface, p.15-23, January 01, 2004, Dunedin, New Zealand
• 3: Lorna M. Brown , Stephen A. Brewster , Helen C. Purchase, Multidimensional tactons for non-visual information presentation in mobile devices, Proceedings of the 8th conference on Human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services, September 12-15, 2006, Helsinki, Finland [doi>10.1145/1152215.1152265]
• 4: Eve E. Hoggan , Stephen A. Brewster, Crossmodal icons for information display, CHI '06 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, April 22-27, 2006, Montréal, Québec, Canada [doi>10.1145/1125451.1125619]
• 5: Miller, G. A., The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information, in The Psychological Review 63 (1956), 81--97.
• 6: Rovan, J. and Hayward, V., Typology of Tactile Sounds and Their Synthesis in Gesture-Driven Computer Music Performance, in Trends in Gestural Control of Music (2000), 297 -- 320.
• 7: Tan, H. Z., Durlach, N. I., Reed, C. M. and Rabinowitz, W. M., Information Transmission with a Multifinger Tactual Display, in Perception and Psychophysics 61(6) (1999), 993 -- 1008.
• 8: Verrillo, R. T. and Gescheider, G. A., Perception Via the Sense of Touch, in I.R. Summers (Ed.), Tactile Aids for the Hearing Impaired (1992), 1 -- 36.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Haptic I/O

General Terms:
Experimentation, Human Factors

Keywords:
non-visual interaction, tactile icons, tactons