A new approach to haptic augmentation of the GUI

  • Authors:
  • Thomas N. Smyth;Arthur E. Kirkpatrick

  • Affiliations:
  • Simon Faser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada;Simon Faser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Multimodal interfaces
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

Most users do not experience the same level of fluency in their interactions with computers that they do with physical objects in their daily life. We believe that much of this results from the limitations of unimodal interaction. Previous efforts in the haptics literature to remedy those limitations have been creative and numerous, but have failed to produce substantial improvements in human performance. This paper presents a new approach, whereby haptic interaction techniques are designed from scratch, in explicit consideration of the strengths and weaknesses of the haptic and motor systems. We introduce a haptic alternative to the tool palette, called Pokespace, which follows this approach. Two studies (6 and 12 participants) conducted with Pokespace found no performance improvement over a traditional interface, but showed that participants learned to use the interface proficiently after about 10 minutes, and could do so without visual attention. The studies also suggested several improvements to our design.