Assessing subjective response to haptic feedback in automotive touchscreens

Abstract

The increasing use of touchscreen interfaces in vehicles poses challenges to designers in terms of optimizing safety, usability and affective response. It is thought that the application of haptic feedback to the touchscreen interface will help to improve the user experience in all of these areas. This paper describes the initial outcomes of a study to investigate user responses to haptic touchscreens using a simulated driving scenario based on the Lane Change Test, along with representative use case tasks. Results indicate preference for multi-modal feedback and user acceptance of the haptic feedback technology. Effects relating to multi-modal interaction and attentional demand are also observed.

Evaluating User Response to In-Car Haptic Feedback Touchscreens Using the Lane Change Test

“…This paper reports on and extends the findings of a 2009 study conducted to evaluate the effects of different combinations of touchscreen visual, audible, and haptic feedback on driving and task performance, affective response, and subjective workload; the initial findings of which were originally published in (M. J. Pitts et al, 2009). A total of 48 non-expert users completed the study.…”

“…This paper reports on the findings of a study into the effects of multimodal touchscreen feedback in an automotive context, conducted in 2009 and originally reported in [8]. The initial findings from the earlier publication are extended with a revised analysis of the subjective data and the addition of objective measures of task performance and driving behaviour, along with discussion of contemporary studies.…”

An Evaluation of Input Controls for In-Car Interactions

“…Furthermore, related work has reported the benefits of providing haptic feedback with in-car controls (e.g. [5,7,16,17,19,21]). We wanted to see if haptic feedback would still be effective for input in real world driving situations.…”

“…analog, digital and virtual speedometers) found in cars and safety concerns regarding driver distraction due to complex interactions with in-car systems. Therefore, studies such as Pitts et al [17] explored the effectiveness of haptic feedback for in-car touchscreens and found that a combination of visual, audible and haptic feedback was subjectively preferred over visual feedback only. Richter et al [19] showed that haptic feedback reduced input error rate and improved overall task completion time on a forcesensitive touchscreen device in their simulated driving study.…”

An Evaluation of Touch and Pressure-Based Scrolling and Haptic Feedback for In-Car Touchscreens

“…[7,12,22,23,25,27]) has found that touch input with in-car interfaces improved with the addition of haptic feedback, so we tested the input techniques with vibrotactile cues to see if it influenced targeting performance.…”