Article

Multidimensional tactons for non-visual information presentation in mobile devices

Authors:

Lorna M. Brown,

Stephen A. Brewster,

Helen C. PurchaseAuthors Info & Claims

MobileHCI '06: Proceedings of the 8th conference on Human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services

Pages 231 - 238

https://doi.org/10.1145/1152215.1152265

Published: 12 September 2006 Publication History

Get Access

Abstract

Tactons are structured vibrotactile messages which can be used for non-visual information presentation when visual displays are limited, unavailable or inappropriate, such as in mobile phones and other mobile devices. Little is yet known about how to design them effectively. Previous studies have investigated the perception of Tactons which encode two dimensions of information using two different vibrotactile parameters (rhythm and roughness) and found recognition rates of around 70. When more dimensions of information are required it may be necessary to extend the parameter-space of these Tactons. Therefore this study investigates recognition rates for Tactons which encode a third dimension of information using spatial location. The results show that identification rate for three-parameter Tactons is just 48, but that this can be increased to 81 by reducing the number of values of one of the parameters. These results will aid designers to select suitable Tactons for use when designing mobile displays.

References

[1]

Immersion VibeTonz System. http://www.immersion.com/mobility/.

Google Scholar

[2]

Brewster, S. and Brown, L. M. Tactons: Structured Tactile Messages for Non-Visual Information Display, Proc. AUIC 2004, Australian Computer Society (2004), 15--23.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[3]

Brown, L. M., Brewster, S., and Purchase, H. C. A First Investigation into the Effectiveness of Tactons, Proc. World Haptics 2005, IEEE Press (2005), 167--176.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[4]

Brown, L. M., Brewster, S. A., and Purchase, H. C. Tactile Crescendos and Sforzandos: Applying Musical Techniques to Tactile Icon Design, to appear in Ext. Abstracts CHI 2006, ACM Press (2006),

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[5]

Brown, L. M. and Kaaresoja, T. Feel Who's Talking: Using Tactons for Mobile Phone Alerts, to appear in Ext. Abstracts CHI 2006, ACM Press (2006),

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[6]

Chang, A. and O'Sullivan, C. Audio-Haptic Feedback in Mobile Phones, Proc. CHI 2005, ACM Press (2005), 1264--1267.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[7]

Cholewiak, R. W. and Wollowitz, M., The design of vibrotactile transducers, in Tactile Aids for the Hearing Impaired, I. Summers (ed). Whurr Publishers Ltd: London, 1992, 57--82.

Google Scholar

[8]

Cholewiak, R. W. and Collins, A. A., "Vibrotactile localization on the arm: Effects of place, space and age", Perception and Psychophysics 65, 7 (2003), 1058--1077.

Crossref

Google Scholar

[9]

Cholewiak, R. W., Brill, C. J., and Schwab, A., "Vibrotactile localization on the abdomen: Effects of place and space", Perception and Psychophysics 66, 6 (2004), 970--987.

Crossref

Google Scholar

[10]

Craig, J. C. and Sherrick, C. E., Dynamic Tactile Displays, in Tactual Perception: A Sourcebook, W. Schiff and E. Foulke (ed). Cambridge University Press, 1982, 209--233.

Google Scholar

[11]

Miller, G. A., "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information", The Psychological Review, 63,(1956), 81--97.

Crossref

Google Scholar

[12]

Senders, V. L., "Measurement and Statistics" Oxford University Press, New York:1958.

Google Scholar

[13]

Tan, H. Z. and Pentland, A. Tactual displays for wearable computing, Proc. ISWC 1997, IEEE Press (1997), 84--89.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[14]

van Erp, J. B. F. and Van Veen, H. A. H. C. A multipurpose tactile vest for astronauts in the international space station. Proc. Eurohaptics 2003(2003), 405--408.

Google Scholar

Cited By

View all

Panëels SHudin CBen Dhiab A(2025)Exploring Textured Communication with Multitouch Capture and Playback of Tactile Interactions on SurfacesProceedings of the Nineteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3689050.3706000(1-6)Online publication date: 4-Mar-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3689050.3706000
Lim CKim GShetty YMcDaniel TSeifi HPark G(2025)Emotional and sensory ratings of vibration Tactons in the lab and crowdsourced settingsInternational Journal of Human-Computer Studies10.1016/j.ijhcs.2025.103446(103446)Online publication date: Jan-2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2025.103446
Van Koningsbruggen RHaliburton LRossmy BGeorge CHornecker EHengeveld BCiolfi LHogan TDöring TJenkins Tvan Dijk JHuron SLi ZCoyle DSigner B(2024)Metaphors and `Tacit' Data: the Role of Metaphors in Data and Physical Data RepresentationsProceedings of the Eighteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3623509.3633355(1-17)Online publication date: 11-Feb-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3623509.3633355
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Multidimensional tactons for non-visual information presentation in mobile devices
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Interaction devices
      1. Haptic devices

Recommendations

Tactons: structured tactile messages for non-visual information display
AUIC '04: Proceedings of the fifth conference on Australasian user interface - Volume 28

Tactile displays are now becoming available in a form that can be easily used in a user interface. This paper describes a new form of tactile output. Tactons, or tactile icons, are structured, abstract messages that can be used to communicate messages ...
New parameters for tacton design
CHI EA '07: CHI '07 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Tactons (tactile icons) are structured vibrotactile messages which can be used for non-visual information presentation. Information can be encoded in a set of Tactons by manipulating parameters available in the tactile domain. One limitation is the ...
Non-visual information display using tactons
CHI EA '04: CHI '04 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems

This paper describes a novel form of display using tactile output. Tactons, or tactile icons, are structured tactile messages that can be used to communicate message to users non visually. A range of different parameters can be used to construct Tactons,...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

MobileHCI '06: Proceedings of the 8th conference on Human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services

September 2006

320 pages

ISBN:1595933905

DOI:10.1145/1152215

General Chairs:
Marko Nieminen
Helsinki University of Technology, Finland
,
Mika Röykkee
Nokia Research Center, Finland

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

In-Cooperation

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 12 September 2006

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Article

Conference

MobileHCI06

MobileHCI06: Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services

September 12 - 15, 2006

Helsinki, Finland

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 202 of 906 submissions, 22%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

194
Total Citations
View Citations
1,708
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)54
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)8

Reflects downloads up to 03 Mar 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all

Panëels SHudin CBen Dhiab A(2025)Exploring Textured Communication with Multitouch Capture and Playback of Tactile Interactions on SurfacesProceedings of the Nineteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3689050.3706000(1-6)Online publication date: 4-Mar-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3689050.3706000
Lim CKim GShetty YMcDaniel TSeifi HPark G(2025)Emotional and sensory ratings of vibration Tactons in the lab and crowdsourced settingsInternational Journal of Human-Computer Studies10.1016/j.ijhcs.2025.103446(103446)Online publication date: Jan-2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2025.103446
Van Koningsbruggen RHaliburton LRossmy BGeorge CHornecker EHengeveld BCiolfi LHogan TDöring TJenkins Tvan Dijk JHuron SLi ZCoyle DSigner B(2024)Metaphors and `Tacit' Data: the Role of Metaphors in Data and Physical Data RepresentationsProceedings of the Eighteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3623509.3633355(1-17)Online publication date: 11-Feb-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3623509.3633355
Xu SSykes SAbtahi PGrossman TWalden DGlueck MRognon C(2024)Designing Haptic Feedback for Sequential Gestural InputsProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642735(1-17)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642735
Gardella NRiggs S(2024)Establishing Natural Tactile Mappings: Mapping Tactile Parameters to Continuous Data ConceptsIEEE Transactions on Haptics10.1109/TOH.2024.335741617:1(80-85)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TOH.2024.3357416
Yeganeh NMakarov IKristjánsson ÁUnnthorsson R(2023)Discrimination Accuracy of Sequential Versus Simultaneous Vibrotactile Stimulation on the ForearmApplied Sciences10.3390/app1401004314:1(43)Online publication date: 20-Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.3390/app14010043
Hornecker EHogan THinrichs UVan Koningsbruggen R(2023)A Design Vocabulary for Data PhysicalizationACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/361736631:1(1-62)Online publication date: 29-Nov-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3617366
Kim SCherian JRay SLacy ATaele PKoh JHammond T(2023)A Wearable Haptic Interface for Assisting Blind and Visually Impaired Students in Learning Algebraic EquationsExtended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544549.3585815(1-7)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544549.3585815
Sabnis NWittchen DVega GReed CStrohmeier P(2023)Tactile Symbols with Continuous and Motion-Coupled Vibration: An Exploration of using Embodied Experiences for Hermeneutic DesignProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581356(1-19)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3581356
Kwon DAbou Chahine RLim CSeifi HPark G(2023)Can we crowdsource Tacton similarity perception and metaphor ratings?Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581120(1-13)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3581120
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Abstract

References

Cited By

Index Terms

Recommendations

Tactons: structured tactile messages for non-visual information display

New parameters for tacton design

Non-visual information display using tactons

Comments

Information

Published In

In-Cooperation

Publisher

Publication History

Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Conference

Acceptance Rates

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Login options

Full Access

View options

PDF

eReader

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media

Affiliations