Designing through making: exploring the simple haptic design space

TEI '11 - Proceedings of the fifth international conference on Tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction |

Published by ACM

In this paper we describe the development and realization of basic haptic design tools. A series of devices or setups allow designers and other stakeholders to adopt a hands-on approach to haptics, and ultimately develop a greater sensitivity and understanding of haptic concepts. By offering tangible manifestations that are relatively abstract and modular, designers can relate to, explore and discuss haptic interfaces and possible variations with greater ease and confidence.

The five Simple Haptics devices that we built offer a basic platform to play and experiment with haptic interfaces. Each setup starts with a simple haptic idea and provides a graspable and experienceable unit to support discussion and variation related the haptic design activities.