Feedback: Haptic Types and Tools

With the move away from mechanical rotary and button switches to new types of digital controls, designers have a lot more freedom to create innovative and interactive products. Digital controls of many types provide better aesthetics, sealing, reliability, and flexibility. But these benefits are offset by the loss of tactile feedback.

Mechanical control devices inherently supply unmistakable tactile feedback to the user. Without this intuitive confirmation, usability problems can result. As a substitute, audible beeps have been commonly used, but sounds can be intrusive and aren’t always effective when environmental noise interferes.

Fortunately, haptic technologies can solve the problem by intelligently adding tactile feedback to digital controls without compromising their aesthetics, sealing, reliability, or flexibility. Because delivering user experiences that differentiate and sell products is an imperative for innovative product designers, haptics is a technology you’ll want to often consider.

How do you get started testing and integrating haptics into a product design?

Haptic Effects and Device Technologies

A wide variety of rich, haptic effects are possible for touch surfaces, two-dimensional devices (lever or joystick), and rotary switches.

Haptic feedback can be integrated into virtually any type of touchscreen manufactured today using Immersion TouchSense Design Kits and components. Immersion can also provide designs for haptic rotary and two-dimensional devices, as well as control schemes, software solutions for various operating systems, authoring tools for creating haptic effects, and packaged solutions for testing user/market acceptance and developing proofs of concept.

Developing Proofs of Concept

To test the value of haptics for your customers or markets, Immersion offers these solutions:

1. Touchscreen demonstrator
2. Touch Feedback Design Kits for Small and Large Touchscreens

 Touchscreen demonstrator

A haptic-enabled 8.4-inch LCD touch monitor with example host applications makes it easy to evaluate the capabilities of Immersion’s touch feedback technology. The Demonstrator is a good way to quickly test and evaluate the use of tactile feedback for your markets and prospects. The product comes ready-to-use with all components — actuators, controller, and software — fully integrated.

Touch Feedback Design Kit for Small Touchscreens

The TouchSense Design Kit for Small Touchscreens includes electromechanical components and documentation that let you quickly evaluate and experience rich touch feedback in small touchscreens up to about 6-inches (diagonal). The design kit lets you build functional haptic-enabled prototypes in either of two ways:

1. A simple integration, with touch effects triggered by an external, standalone haptics sampler board. This prototyping method provides the quickest path to experiencing rich haptics in the target platform.

2. A system-level integration, with effects triggered by commands from the system processor. This prototyping method provides more of a production-quality implementation suitable for formal usability or focus-group testing

Touch Feedback Design Kit for Large Touchscreens

The TouchSense Design Kit for Large Touchscreens includes components and information needed to integrate TouchSense touch feedback into a production-ready touchscreen, touch panel, or touch surface of about 6 to 36 inches (diagonal).  Contents includes documentation, actuator samples, control board samples, power supply, SDK with API, Windows sample application and source code, demonstration files, cabling, and fasteners.

Both methods enable rich, market-proven TouchSense touch feedback technology for a touchscreen-based product.

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