Artex: Artificial Textures from Everyday Surfaces for Touchscreens

Crossan, A., Williamson, J. and Brewster, S.A. (2010) Artex: Artificial Textures from Everyday Surfaces for Touchscreens. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2010, Atlanta, GA, USA, April 10-15th,

Abstract

The lack of tactile feedback available on touchscreen devices adversely affects their usability and forces the user to rely heavily on visual feedback. Here we propose texturing a touchscreen with virtual vibrotactile textures to support the user when browsing an interface non-visually. We demonstrate how convincing prerecorded textures can be delivered using processed audio files generated through recorded audio from a contact microphone being dragged over everyday surfaces. These textures are displayed through a vibrotactile device attached to the back of an HTC Hero phone varying the rate and amplitude of the texture with the user’s finger speed on the screen. We then discuss our future work exploring the potential of this idea to allow browsing of information and widgets non-visually.

• Item Type: Conference Proceedings
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Brewster, Professor Stephen and Williamson, Dr John and Crossan, Dr Andrew
• Authors: Crossan, A., Williamson, J., and Brewster, S.A.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science
• Publisher: ACM Press, Addison-Wesley