Not only are our interfaces becoming increasingly flat, but so are the devices on which the interface is presented. The analog, haptic factor is diminishing, because what was previously a physical button, for example, has evolved into a digital button on a flat screen. In an exchange with Konrad Baumann, we talked about the areas in which the flattening of devices has changed the most or is becoming increasingly prevalent. Of course, it is present in almost all industries due to digitalization, but the mobile devices and also the automotive industry caught our attention the most in its change.
In our conversation about the automotive industry, we mainly looked at the car dashboard, as well as its functions, and addressed the following factors:
- The aesthetic, digital and futuristic factor of displays
- Flat and smart design changes interaction and functions
- Distraction factor is much greater, due to expanded range of functions
- Physical and haptic advantages of, for example, push or turn knobs and analog buttons are almost completely eliminated
- New use of senses, since the sense of touch is not as effective due to the flat interface (you can no longer look at the road and feel the rotary knob with which you want to adjust the volume, but must actively direct your gaze away from the road to the display or act via voice control)
- tactile feedback while driving (lane assistant)
- simple intuitive display that does not require any special instruction
These factors of the touch display brought me back to required haptic feedback. A flat display allows much less access because you can’t feel the interface the way you would like to intuitively with your hands. The flatness of the digital interface would prevent you from feeling surface textures, materials, elevations, etc. of the input options. Therefore, a digital interface requires and includes haptic feedback. Haptic feedback in digital interfaces, as mentioned in my last blog post, means that forces, vibrations or movements are applied to the user via the interface. This allows the user to haptically feel what they are seeing and doing through a digital interface. We can perceive familiar objects very quickly and also very accurately if we use only our sense of touch. This action of “active touch” is called haptic sensation or simply haptics. Since we use our hands primarily to explore the world tactilely, haptic sensation is closely related to the function of our hands and the way we use them. Often it does not require explanation of how to use the sensed object, as this is intuitively applicable based on the texture and properties – picked up by the sense of touch.
»Haptic exploration enables us to perceive both the geometric and material properties of objects. The former refers to features such as size, shape, orientation, and curvature, whereas the latter includes attributes such as surface texture, compliance, and thermal characteristics. The size and shape of objects that fit within the hand can be perceived on the basis of skin indentation and the pose of the fingers, because the hand can enclose the object.«
– Lynette A. Jones (Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, 2018).
Just by touching and feeling, the surface texture and interaction with a particular element can be made out. Compared to hearing or seeing, we can perceive bidirectional signals through haptic perception. The information we can extract about the properties of an object is closely related to the movements we make to perceive those properties.
»Haptic sensing is critical to our experience of the world, from providing us with information that enables us to use just the right amount of force to lift a glass of water from a table, to finding the light switch on the bedroom wall in the dark.«
– Lynette A. Jones (2018)
However, the sense of touch is thought to have a narrower bandwidth than vision or hearing, meaning that the amount of information it can process in time is less than that of the other two senses. In everyday life, it is mainly hearing and vision that dominate our interaction with the world, which is why we often rely on the information we pick up with them. Especially when interacting with digital displays, however, haptic feedback is a way to integrate the sense of touch to provide information, and make the digital world more experiential and, most importantly, accessible. Concerning the car dashboard, the sence of touch and haptic feedback is very important. Everything that includes vision or audio, distracts the driver. Preparing tactile or haptic feedback can prevent directing the gaze away from the road.
»Understanding how we perceive these various aspects of a surface is important in a number of areas, from the feel of consumer products that we hold, such as phones, handles, paper, and fabrics, to creating such textures artificially on flat screens.«
– Lynette A. Jones (2018)
Related to my starting point of researching the benefits of skeuo- and neumorphism in the field of Interaction Design, haptic feedback is an indispensable factor to consider when applying these design styles. These capabilities allow the real world signifier of a skeuo- and neumorphic objects to be felt, transferring the analog world into the digital display. The real world counterpart of skeuomorphism can thus be made more tangible, thereby mitigating the accessibility difficulties of neumorphism.
Sources:
Lynette A. Jones, Haptics, Massachusetts 2018
Ultraleap: What is Haptic Feedback? (07.04.2021)
https://www.ultraleap.com/company/news/blog/what-is-haptic-feedback/
