Storytelling with Touch

Storytelling with Touch

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David Birnbaum | Sr. UX Design ManagerImmersion Corporation

8 July 2014

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How might we tell a story about the value of tactile effects for wearable devices?

• Engage users of smart watches and fitness wearables. Listen to how users are using smart watches throughout their day. Why they bought them.

• Look for synergies between user needs and the known value of tactile feedback.

© 2014 Immersion Corporation

We all know most wearables have a vibrating notification function. But what if vibration could be so much more than it is today? What if it could provide meaningful information?

Context. If your wearable knows your context, it can serve as your primary tactile display for all your digital interactions.

Constant contact. Notifications received by your phone can be reliably communicated to you through your wearable, which is always in contact with your body.

Meaning. Wearables have small screens. This lack of visual bandwidth means less information can be presented to you at one time. Immersion's technology provides a wider bandwidth for tactile information, enabling high resolution tactile messages.

Design criteria

Engage emotion. Touch is emotional. Find ways to engage the emotions of users.

Extend perception. Feel “invisible” processes such as the movement of data.

Use intuition. Use universal language of touch, not “vibration symbols”.

Tactile feedback for wearables Tactile design principles


Insights we gained from talking to wearables users were synthesized with the tactile design best practices we develop and use at Immersion.

We determined that a major part of the value of tactile effects for wearables is the ability to display different tactile effects depending on context. But how could our prototype create a convincing sense of context?

ProblemHow to prototype with context?


How could we create a demo experience that showed the value of meaningful haptics?

I can feel what he’s feeling in this video!


Solution: You put on a smartwatch, and then play a video on a tablet. The character in the video has the same smartwatch as you. You feel what she feels when she feels it.


We thought of a lot of contexts where meaningful, personal tactile effects would be valuable to users.


Wearables users helped us figure out which were most compelling.

8© 2014 Immersion Corporation

Then we created high-quality videos depicting the concepts.

Signature Alerts• Encode the meaning of an alert in the

vibration itself.

• Preserve the emotion and intention of the sender.

• Represent urgency level in an intuitive way.


Here’s an example of one of the video concepts we created. Other examples are shown on the following slides.

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[VIDEO]© 2014 Immersion Corporation

Second Screen• Provide local tactile feedback for distant,

large-screen interaction.

• Create the illusion of physicality.

• Make gaming interactions fun and playful.


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Health Monitor• Ensure users receive critical messages.

• Allow users to ignore less-critical messages.


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Internet of Things• Make freehand gestures more

controllable.

• Feel the invisible user interface for the objects around you.


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We found an innovative way to portray context in a wearables demo – tactile video.

Tactile effects are uniquely suited to wearables because they’re intuitive, personal, and meaningful.

Recap


Thank you.

@davidmbirnbaum

[email protected]


