Haptic system
CUSTOMER: MEITU, LG
MY ROLE
Interaction designer
KEY CONTRIBUTION
Identify the issue
Establish the haptic experience with experiments
Shared the knowledge to set up their design system.
ABOUT PROJECT
Haptic use the tactile memory to build mental models of the tangible world. It have great impact to introduce the haptic experience into the traditional interaction area.
Some famous mobile manufactories including LG, MEITU, HUAWEI reached to our team and collaborated on the haptic experience enhancement for their initial system.
I worked with the team to build the new haptic system which mapping to mobile's design style.
DESIGN CHALLENGE
01. Haptic experience is subjective
The most challenge for haptic is, the experience is super subjective and sensitive. There is no global guidance or rules can be applied.
02. Haptic experience is dependent on hardware.
Haptic experience is dependent on hardware, the actuator, and software that controls it. Different actuator types and software drivers have different capabilities, even within a same module device, the experience might varies from one to the other
UNDERSTANDING
To provide a better experience for the new hardware,I analyzed the most common phone operation system and create the detail user case and haptic value list for each scenario, including power on/off, make a phone call, text, timer, etc.
ITERATION
I prioritized the haptic scenarios based on the analysis list by value and divided the demo into several categories. Here is the example:
Keyboard
Tactile feedback in keyboards is one of the most popular features used by today's mobile smartphone users. Keyboard interaction requires fast-paced, precise gestures. and well-designed tactile effects, which can increase typing speed, decrease error rates and most important, make the user feel more confident and in control of the interaction.
EVALUATION
To evaluated the haptic experience, I invited 7 internal users to join our cafe study with randomly picked device. Each of them were asked to describe what did they feel and select the strength of the tactical feedback.
The cafe study evaluated the average strength of the devices and the common feedback on the experience. Which is a good reference for the iteration.
In the whole project, I set up a bunch of cafe studies to evaluate the design solution.