Haptic feedback in freehand gesture interaction

Abstract

In this thesis work, haptic feedback in gesture interaction was studied. More precisely, focus was on vibrotactile feedback and freehand gestural input methods. Vibrotactile feedback methods have been studied extensively in the fields of touch-based interaction, remote control and mid-air gestural input, and mostly positive effects on user performance have been found. An experiment was conducted in order to investigate if vibrotactile feedback has an impact on user performance in a simple data entry task. In the study, two gestural input methods were compared and the effects of visual and vibrotactile feedback added to each method were examined. Statistically significant differences in task performance between input methods were found. Results also showed that less keystrokes per character were required with visual feedback. No other significant differences were found between the types of feedback. However, preference for vibrotactile feedback was observed. The findings indicate that the careful design of an input method primarily has an impact on user performance and the feedback method can enhance this performance in diverse ways.