Reference Information
Title: SemFeel: a user interface with semantic tactile feedback for mobile touch-screen devices
Title: SemFeel: a user interface with semantic tactile feedback for mobile touch-screen devices
Authors: Koji Yatani University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
Khai Nhut Truong University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
Presentation Venue: UIST 2009: 22nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology; Date: 2009;
Location: New York, NY, USA
Summary
Location: New York, NY, USA
Summary
This paper, presents a prototype for a new kind of vibration system for touch-screen devices. The purpose is to improve on current tactile feedback solutions that implement vibration with either one actuator on the whole phone, or in one specific location by varying intensity and frequency. This paper introduces Semfeel which is a system that implements “motion vibration". The idea is to have five strategically placed vibrators that enables users to distinguish between different patterns. With current touch-screen keyboards that don’t have any vibration feedback, it can be hard to tell what you’re typing without looking at the screen. SemFeel is designed to allow a user to use their device without looking at the screen.
As mentioned before, SemFeel uses 5 different vibrators that can be tuned to 3 different vibration strengths to produce different patterns, such as top to bottom, or in a clockwise circular fashion. The picture below shows the eleven types of patterns. The researchers, after an extensive user study test, found that 83.3 – 93.3% of the time, users can distinguish between the different patterns. The applications the authors suggest for Semfeel range from enabling the Blind to read Braille on touch screens, to improving response time when typing on a touch-screen keyboard.
 |
| picture from paper |
Discussion
I found this research paper really interesting and appreciated the part where it gave a brief overview of the history behind tactile feedback and the researchers responsible for finding out that tactile feedback could be used to convey rich information content. I also like the whole idea of adding more vibration motors to the phone to give feedback for gestures.
I like this too, because traditional vibration feedback (the same vibration frequency and intensity, no matter what you do) is actually more annoying than it is helpful. I hope to see this implemented in the near future.
ReplyDelete