Habituation to Pseudo-Ambient Vibrotactile Patterns for Remote Awareness

Abstract

Habituation is a key aspect of the human sensory processing system. This includes the sense of touch, since it allows our skin receptors to be constantly stimulated, yet largely ignored until something of interest occurs or we consciously focus our attention on the sensations and their meanings. This "ambience" is largely lacking in mobile and wearable systems today, as jarring notifications clamor for our attention. Yet, there are few longitudinal, in-the-wild studies that explore whether and how users can habituate to new ongoing haptic stimuli, especially in practical applications. We report on a three-week in-the-wild study with each participant wearing a vibrotactile device throughout every day. The device rendered two brief vibrotactile pulses every 20 seconds, and varied their durations based on a linked partner’s current activity. Some participants had little difficulty acclimating to the system from the very beginning, but practically all expressed at least some days of annoyance/distraction within the first week. Despite considerable variation among participants, we find a significant drop in both annoyance and distraction over the multiple weeks of the study. A clear majority no longer report annoyance or distraction by the end of the experiment, indicating habituation.