Putting the Feel in "Look and Feel"
In preparation for CHI 2000, we will present our paper on haptically
enhancing a standard desktop.
Abstract - Haptic devices are now commercially available and thus touch
has become a potentially realistic solution to a variety of interaction
design challenges. We report on an investigation of the use of touch as
a way of reducing visual overload in the conventional desktop. In a
two-phase study, we investigated the use of the PHANToM haptic device as
a means of interacting with a conventional graphical user interface. The
first experiment compared the effects of four different haptic
augmentations on usability in a simple targeting task. The second
experiment involved a more ecologically-oriented searching and scrolling
task. Results indicated that the haptic effects did not improve users
performance in terms of task completion time. However, the number of
errors made was significantly reduced. Subjective workload measures
showed that participants perceived many aspects of workload as
significantly less with haptics. The results are described and the
implications for the use of haptics in user interface design are
discussed.
For more information contact: mcgeemr@dcs.gla.ac.uk