In this study, we developed a new type of smartwatch, the HaptiWatch, which has notification functions that are not present in analog watches that lack a high‐resolution display. The HaptiWatch also has a priority‐filtering function that distinguishes notifications by their importance. Notification information is encoded as light and haptic pulses which allow users to recognize the type and importance of the notification without having to see the watch. To evaluate the user experience (UX) of the HaptiWatch's new notification system, a comparative study was conducted together with the notification system of the Samsung Galaxy Gear S3 Frontier, a well‐known smartwatch. The UX evaluation results indicate that the notification system of the HaptiWatch provides an experience that is comparable to that of the Gear S3.
As smartwatches gain popularity in the marketplace, various smartwatch context studies have been conducted. The use of smartwatches can be divided into situations with and without constraint both physically and psychologically. Notably, in constrained situations, if the user wants to check the information received in the smartwatch visually, a high cognitive load is involved. To solve this problem, we propose a method to encode and transmit information from the smartwatch with haptic pulses. First, we determine the informational category of the smartwatch and generate various haptic pulses. Next, we propose and verify a haptic pulse set that can represent the informational category of the smartwatch. Using the proposed haptic pulse set, users can receive smartwatch information in constraint situations. The use of encoded haptic pulses needs to be considered to provide information effectively from the smartwatch to the wearer.
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