2bit-TactileHand: Evaluating Tactons for On-Body Vibrotactile Displays on the Hand and Wrist

Abstract

Visual interfaces can provide a great density of information. However, the required focused visual attention results in a high cognitive effort. This cognitive load significantly increases when multiple tasks are performed that also require visual attention. In this paper, we evaluate the perceptual abilities of 2bit tactons on the wrist and the hand as a type of complementary feedback. Based on our evaluation, 2bit tactons are reasonably high perceivable (≈ 92%) at the hand distributed among several fingers. Additionally, the data concluded that vibrotactile feedback on hand is significantly more accurate than the wrist, which coincides with the subjects' preference. TactileHand's feasibility was demonstrated in three pilot studies, encoding ambient, explicit and implicit information into 2bit tactons in different scenarios.