Touchscreen Haptic Augmentation Effects on Tapping, Drag and Drop, and Path Following

We study the effects of haptic augmentation on tapping, path following, and drag & drop tasks based on a recent flagship smartphone with refined touch sensing and haptic actuator technologies. Results show actuated haptic confirmation on tapping targets was subjectively appreciated by some users but did not improve tapping speed or accuracy. For drag & drop, a clear performance improvement was measured when haptic feedback is applied to target boundary crossing, particularly when the targets are small. For path following tasks, virtual haptic feedback improved accuracy at a reduced speed in a sitting condition. Stronger results were achieved in a physical haptic mock-up. Overall, we found actuated touchscreen haptic feedback particularly effective when the touched object was visually interfered by the finger. Participants subjective experience of haptic feedback in all tasks tended to be more positive than their time or accuracy performance suggests. We compare and discuss these findings with previous results on early generations of devices. The work provides an empirical foundation to product design and future research of touch input and haptic systems.