Investigating the Affective Impression of Tactile Feedback on Mobile Devices

Abstract

On mobile devices, vibrotactile messages are a common way to give feedback to the user. They might be a less obtrusive means to communicate information about the system status compared to auditory feedback. Much research has focused on the possibilities to perceive and discriminate different vibrotactile messages, less regarding her contentual interpretation. We describe a series of two studies. Aim of the pilot study was to find meaningful vibrotactile messages of which we then wanted to investigate the affective impression and functional connotation on a mobile device within varying staged contexts. Results show that the affective impression of those so-called Tactons is independent of the context. Moreover, we observed a relation between ratings of affective quality and functional applicability. We conclude that tactile feedback messages are unobtrusive, but have to be designed carefully to convey their intended meaning in a working context as well as in a leisure time situation. Tactile feedback. Mobile context. Affective impression.

Affective Vibrotactile Stimuli: Relation between Vibrotactile Parameters and Affective Responses

“…In a broader sense, affective responses to different haptic stimuli have been widely studied [5,6]. However, there is scarce research on affective responses elicited by vibrotactile stimuli, and the related studies did not consider a comprehensive set of parameters [4,[7][8][9][10]. For example, Yoo et al [7] investigated the affective responses to amplitude-modulated vibrotactile stimuli by controlling carrier frequency, envelope, and duration, but disregarding rhythm, which shows affective impacts according to some studies [8,9].…”

“…However, there is scarce research on affective responses elicited by vibrotactile stimuli, and the related studies did not consider a comprehensive set of parameters [4,[7][8][9][10]. For example, Yoo et al [7] investigated the affective responses to amplitude-modulated vibrotactile stimuli by controlling carrier frequency, envelope, and duration, but disregarding rhythm, which shows affective impacts according to some studies [8,9]. In contrast, for this study we investigated comprehensive parameters that can be controlled in typical vibrotactile actuators from commercial electronic devices to determine those that elicit the clearest affective responses.…”

“…Overall, we use 48 types of vibrotactile stimuli obtained from variations of the five parameters. Eleven participants rate the vibrotactile stimuli according to five affective responses, which are arousal, comfort, dominance [4,5,[7][8][9][10], preference, and familiarity. We then analyze the response rating to determine the most effective vibrotactile parameters eliciting human affective responses.…”

“…We focus on responses including arousal, comfort, and dominance, derived from the Russell's circumplex model [11]. These responses are often used to express affective responses depending on haptic perception in previous studies [4,5,[7][8][9][10]. Moreover, we consider preference and familiarity in this study, as these responses can be beneficial for commercial applications.…”

Communication via warm haptic interfaces does not increase social warmth

“…These 'Affective Haptic Interfaces' [90] B Christian J. could be utilized in a non-social way, by merely drawing upon their physical qualities. Different materials and textures (e.g., [35,81,84,96,106]), or haptic actuators such as vibrotactile [79,80], air jet based [89], friction-based [77], or force feedback [5] can be employed to elicit affective responses in the receiver. Another approach to use affective haptics is to directly attribute the physical stimuli to a social source, as is for instance the case with touching social robots [88,101] or in Mediated Social Touch [26,36,40].…”