The haptic modality -the sense of touch -is utilized very limitedly in current human-computer interaction. Especially in mobile communication, the haptic modality could provide a means for richer multimodal and emotional communication between users over distance. Haptic user interface prototypes have been developed but their user experience has not been studied extensively. We conducted seven focus group sessions to study users' expectations for user experience of haptic interaction, specifically focusing on mobile communication. The paper presents the user experience factors that were regarded by potential users as salient in haptic interaction: subjective quality of the haptic stimuli, privacy, intimacy and spontaneity. Also the possibilities, restrictions and suitability of the haptic mobile communication are discussed. Most appropriate use cases for haptic communication were found to be conveying emotions and binary information. As the main conclusion, we present design guidelines for haptic mobile communication that were drawn up based on the findings.
The spreading of mobile devices to all areas of everyday life impacts many contexts of use, including cars. Even though driving itself has remained relatively unchanged, there are now a wide variety of new in-car tasks, which people perform with both integrated infotainment systems and their mobile devices. To gain insights into this new task context and how it could be improved, we conducted a qualitative, contextual study in which we observed real-life car journeys with eight participants. The focus was on user interaction with touchscreen mobile devices, due to their wide range of functions and services. The findings show that the car is an extension of other contexts and it contains a rich set of infotainment tasks, including use of social media. Drivers emphasized gesture interaction and the use of non-visual modalities, for replacing visual information and notifying of changes in the driving context. Based on the findings, we present design implications for future incar infotainment systems.
Haptic feedback based on the sense of touch and movement is a promising area of human-computer interaction in the car context. Most user studies on haptic feedback in the car have been controlled experiments of specific types of haptic stimuli. For the study presented in this paper, twelve participants tried novel haptic feedback prototypes and evaluated communication scenarios in the physical car context. Our aim was to understand user experiences and usage potential of haptic feedback in the car. The qualitative results show that haptic feedback may offer support for safety and social communication, but can be hard to interpret. We propose design considerations for incar haptics such as simplicity, subtleness and directionality.
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