Navigation using the haptic feedback of a mobile phone and a smartwatch

Abstract

The value of using navigation applications is clear. However there is room for improvement in the User Experience of these applications. One main problem is the necessity of looking at a device’s screen to follow directions. Using vision to find a path causes problems and difficulties, especially for people who are visually impaired or blind. Currently, there are other ways to tackle this problem, such as using touch and audition. Using sounds to show directions, however, can be problematic, especially in crowded places. Current touch feedback is not the best solution either because different directions are shown on one device with rhythms and patterns that users need to memorize. Cognitive overload, a long time to react, and more mistakes in distinguishing the directions are possible downsides. In this study, we propose new ideas for showing directions with haptic feedback that do not have the same problems as current solutions. Instead of using only one device, we combined multiple haptic devices to design haptic directional cues that are easier to understand and distinguish. More specifically, we used a smartwatch as an additional device to a mobile phone. Users could feel vibrations from each or both devices. We used two C-2 tactors instead of the actual devices to develop and validate the solution. One of the tactors was placed in the participant’s pocket, and the other one was placed on their wrist. We had two main strategies to show directions. The first strategy is called Implicit. In this strategy, only one of the two devices vibrates simultaneously. The direction is indicated by the device’s position relative to the other one. The second strategy is called Explicit. In this strategy, a sequence of vibrations starts from one device and moves to the other. The direction of this movement indicates in which direction they should go. We also compared these two strategies with another one that is inspired by the directional haptic feedback used in a commercial smartwatch, which we will call Symbolic. We ran 3 experiments. In each experiment, we changed some variables. In the first experiment, the goal was to see which of the suggested directional cues are easier to understand when there is no training. In the second experiment, we trained participants and compared Symbolic directional cues with Explicit and Implicit cues. In the last experiment, we added variables to make the situation closer to the real world, such as distractions and haptic notifications. The experiments showed that our suggested directional designs using two devices work better than Symbolic cues. Also, the Explicit directional cues work best to make the directions distinguishable from other typical notifications. Although the suggested designs are easy to understand, instructions are still necessary to make sense of them.

Date	17 Feb 2022
Original language	American English
Awarding Institution	École de technologie supérieure
Supervisor	Vincent Lévesque (Supervisor)