Making Haptic Interaction Design Accessible: Models, Tools and Community

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Much of today's human-facing technology is embodied in matter that is handled, worn, palpated or pressed as a basic modality of use. However, when these touched things need to be haptically active (actuated by tactile or force feedback), designers are rarely equipped to work in the medium. Our goal is to address haptic-specific design obstacles such as mechanism proliferation, need for end-user customization, and a lack of appropriate, powerful tools and models - to make it far easier to construct viable interactions. We will pivot basic research and mobilize community energy towards needed models and tools through three primary objectives that jointly address these obstacles, and curate the result in an open repository: Haphub.io.[1] Give device inventors and interaction designers access to existing device designs: the HapXploratorium.Of hundreds of haptic inventions, most are forgotten and repeated rather than built upon. We are building an interactive, faceted online library to capture published prototypes and commercial products, searchable both by inventors, and by designers who want to put haptics into applications via criteria they care about. The crux is identifying and assigning unconventional metadata through novel large-scale expert-sourced processes. The result will have high relevance to other technology domains.[2] Give non-engineer designers access to haptic system customization.Buyable haptic systems are expensive, and most give generic support to desktop graphic systems. Non-engineers must be empowered to reshape, scale, attach and invert designs to solve specific problems that involve, e.g., portability or unusual configurations. We will accelerate the emerging do-it-yourself (DIY) haptic fabrication movement by proceduralizing steps of adapting existing device designs (from the HapXploratorium) into extendable templates.[3] Give researchers access to computational models of dynamic and interactive social touch.Psychologists have studied and modeled how people use social and informative touch for explicit communication, to convey emotional cues, coordinate action, and facilitate cooperation or competition. We will translate theoretical models to computable ones, bringing psychology advances to bear on social intelligence in haptic interactive technology in mobile devices, wearables, cockpit interfaces and human-robot interaction. Addressing these barriers to translation of 30 years of invention requires research advances based on understanding design of both haptic systems and interactions. It will lower the threshold for conducting high-quality application design, finally enabling uptake of a growth technology in areas such as virtual and augmented reality, human-robot interaction, automobile and aircraft cockpits, surface interfaces and handheld and mobile devices.