SlickFeel: Sliding and Clicking Haptic Feedback on a Touchscreen

We present SlickFeel, a single haptic display setup that can deliver two distinct types of feedback to a finger on a touchscreen during typical operations of sliding and clicking. Sliding feedback enables the sliding finger to feel interactive objects on a touchscreen through variations in friction. Clicking feedback provides a key-click sensation for confirming a key or button click. Two scenarios have been developed to demonstrate the utility of the two haptic effects. In the first, simple button-click scenario, a user feels the positions of four buttons on a touchscreen by sliding a finger over them and feels a simulated key-click signal by pressing on any of the buttons. In the second scenario, the advantage of haptic feedback is demonstrated in a haptically-enhanced thumbtyping scenario. A user enters text on a touchscreen with two thumbs without having to monitor the thumbs’ locations on the screen. By integrating SlickFeel with a Kindle Fire tablet, we show that it can be used with existing mobile touchscreen devices.