Why Independent Analyst Says Haptics Will Change the User Experience

PMN, host of the upcoming MEX Mobile User Experience strategy forum in London (May 27 to 28), has published a report on six savvy new trends coming out of Mobile World Congress (MWC). The report explains how haptics improves the touchscreen user experience by providing responses similar to actual hardware buttons. And we see that the other five trends could also be improved with tactile feedback.

The PMN report leads with a section entitled “Feeling the changes in user input methods,” observing that an interesting trend runs through many of the new handset releases at MWC: haptics. The report identifies Immersion’s platform as having fine control of a handset’s vibration motors, allowing a wide range of responses.

"Using Immersion’s platform, manufacturers can map vibration responses to different parts of the screen, overcoming the dead, ‘glassy’ feeling a lot of users complain about when using a touchscreen device for the first time. When you select a button on the screen, the device vibrates in a way that simulates the tactile feedback a user would expect from a physical hardware key. . . It is difficult even to find the right language to describe this kind of interaction, as many of the responses combine visual and audible elements with new sensations of feeling that have never been experienced on a handset."(1)

The report also describes five additional trends that Immersion believes could also be improved with the VibeTonz platform:

1) Couple-IT
Alloy’s Couple-IT, a handset and a pocket-sized laptop, shares information over a network, synchronizing data in the background.

As Gus Desbarats, chairman of Alloy Total Product Design writes: “. . . the brand experience needs to be personal and intimate. . . . Successful mobile brands will be those that really do the best job building deep understanding of their customer’s life context and converting that insight into device and service specifications that will achieve the attention to detail needed to create an experience [that] fits the customer and not the other way round.”(2)

What better way to make the user experience more personal and intimate than through the sense of touch, the most personal and intimate of all the senses? There are countless ways touch feedback can be used to create a user experience that fits the customer. A fairly complete list can be found in Appendix A (page 9) of HAPTICS: Improving the Mobile User Experience through Touch (pdf), but just three examples include:

• Communicating call status (call waiting, forwarding, connecting, dropped)
• Haptic ringtones that identify the caller even when sound is turned off
• Memorable alerts for calendar items, low battery, call timer, message priority/arrival

VibeTonz® tactile feedback improves the user experience by working to off-load the user’s cluttered sound and visual channels. It can do this because through touch, which is the very first way that we learn to communicate, we understand instinctively. In the case of Couple-IT, an assurance, communicated subtly and understood instinctively, that synchronization between devices had been made, would be a very personal and intimate way to achieve attention to detail that creates a great customer experience.

2) Fly Mobile low-cost, high-value handsets.
Fly Mobile looks to refresh its low-cost, high-value product portfolio on an almost quarterly basis, continually iterating new handsets that take advantage of latest component developments to further enhance specifications or reduce prices. VibeTonz tactile feedback can add high-value impact to any product line, and a single implementation of the VibeTonz platform supplies the infrastructure for improvements throughout the phone including for user interface function and design, messages, alerts, and entertainment features.

3) Yahoo! oneConnect
Among its social networking features, oneConnect lets users: integrate contacts from social networks, professional networks, and communities into their address book; unify a wide range of IM and SMS services; view recent status updates on social sites and update their own status and broadcast it to friends; and locate nearby friends through proximity alerts. Using this service with the VibeTonz System in their phone, users could:

• Attach a particular tactile effect to groups or individuals in the contacts list so they can be found quickly
• Privately know when an IM buddy comes on or drops offline
• Know when an SMS message arrives, who it’s from, and how important — all without looking, or without audible alerts interfering with other conversations or activities
• Receive vibrational cues that help them better navigate social networking Web sites on the small screen
• Instinctively know when a buddy is in the vicinity and whether they are getting closer or farther from meeting face-to-face

4) The Spice handset
The Spice handset, aimed at the movie and video obsessed Bollywood crowd, features an ultra low-cost integrated optical disk drive, allowing users to watch DVD-quality films on their mobile phone. The handset could use VibeTonz tactile feedback within videos to underscore the action of a volcano, motorcycle, or door slam, making the small screen more engaging, fun, and exciting.

5) TrakAx tool
The TrakAx mobile content production tool lets users mix photos, videos, and audio into a multimedia presentation. As with any application that relies on small virtual touchscreen buttons, TrakAx could be just that more usable and fun with tactile feedback that:

• Communicates application status
• Confirms button presses
• Alerts the user with a different feel when they’ve pressed a button they didn’t intend

To read PMN’s complete report, go to http://www.mobileuserexperience.com/?p=463. For more information on how the VibeTonz platform can enhance mobile phones, content, or services, contact the Immersion representative near you.

(1) Pawlowski, Marek. February 19, 2008. More UX trends from MWC. MEX – the strategy forum for mobile user experience. PMN. http://www.mobileuserexperience.com/?p=463

(2) Desbarats, Gus. February 7, 2008. Connecting brand, design and user experience. MEX – the strategy forum for mobile user experience. PMN. http://www.mobileuserexperience.com/?p=461