{"id":284546,"date":"2014-08-05T09:00:23","date_gmt":"2014-08-05T16:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/?p=284546"},"modified":"2016-08-29T11:40:21","modified_gmt":"2016-08-29T18:40:21","slug":"beyond-tapping-sliding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/blog\/beyond-tapping-sliding\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond Tapping and Sliding"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe way we design computers today,\u201d Microsoft researcher Hong Tan (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> says, \u201cit would seem that people only use their eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sure, we tap on our device screens, slide our fingertips across the glass, and type on on-screen keyboards. Sometimes, we give voice commands and listen back. Our phones vibrate when a text arrives, and we feel a rumble from a joystick when we play a video game.<\/p>\n

But still, it\u2019s almost entirely about the eyes.<\/p>\n

\"Hong

Hong Tan<\/p><\/div>\n

Tan believes we have barely begun to engage our other senses, particularly the one in which she specializes: touch. Her field of expertise is computer haptics\u2014developing hardware and software to add tactile sensations to the computing experience.<\/p>\n

Imagine experiencing a clicking sensation when pressing an on-screen button, sensing the weight of folders when dragging and dropping, and perhaps even feeling the texture of a sweater for sale online.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith sight alone, most people are perfectly fine interacting with computing devices today,\u201d Tan says, \u201cbut how much more efficiently, how much more enjoyably, can we interact with computers? How much more accessible can we make them? We won\u2019t know until this becomes taken for granted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Based at Microsoft Research Asia<\/a>, Tan recently introduced her work and the field of computer haptics to her largest audience yet via a popular technology column on Sina.com, the largest Chinese-language web portal.<\/p>\n

Tan begins with the basic assumption that we are multisensory beings\u2014a perspective she absorbed at the start of her research career. As a graduate student in electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she worked with an adviser, Nat Durlach, who was studying psychoacoustics\u2014the psychology of hearing\u2014and performing work on hearing-aid technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was studying people who were both deaf and blind,\u201d Tan says. \u201cThey have a way of communicating by placing their hands on speakers\u2019 faces. They can feel how your mouth opens and closes, the air flow, the muscle tension in the cheeks. They can also pick up laryngeal vibration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tan explains that people who are both deaf and blind also place their hands back on their own faces and try to articulate the same sounds until the sensation in their hands felt similar\u2014much the way Helen Keller learned to talk a century earlier.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were really amazed and inspired by that method,\u201d she says. \u201cThat\u2019s how I all of a sudden got interested in touch, because I just realized how little we knew about touch, about the richness of touch, and also how much information touch can transmit. Touch can convey speech\u2014that\u2019s a lot of information.\u201d<\/p>\n

Almost Magic<\/h2>\n

Tan spent 13 years on the Purdue University faculty before joining Microsoft Research in 2011 on a leave of absence. She is working in two areas of computer haptics: providing key-click feedback on flat keyboards and creating feelings of texture and traction on glass surfaces using electrovibration.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing that\u2019s really, really cool,\u201d she says, \u201cis to take a smooth piece of glass but make it feel different\u2014it\u2019s almost magic.\u201d<\/p>\n

The way users currently interact with device screens is entirely two-dimensional, Tan notes, as opposed to a multisensory experience.<\/p>\n

Tan\u2019s vision, and that of the small but growing field of computer haptics, is to \u201cfully engage the sense of touch in user-device interaction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Haptics researchers are investigating a range of tactile-feedback mechanisms that involve both hardware and software. Some are based on skin-receptor stimulation, others on muscle-receptor stimulation. The work is heavily interdisciplinary. In the case of vibration feedback, for example, it involves electronic engineering and mechanics, as well as knowledge about human sensitivity to various vibration frequencies.<\/p>\n

In the case of haptic keyboards, the key-click feedback is not just symbolic or abstract: It simulates the feeling of pressing a key. One method is to put a layer of material under the glass that bends under electric voltage, which, in turn, bends the glass ever so slightly to simulate a key click.<\/p>\n

Tan\u2019s Human-Computer Interaction<\/a> group has developed a number of prototypes that produce haptic keyboard feedback. In a recent research paper<\/a>, she and Jin Ryong Kim, a graduate student at Purdue, showed that haptic keyboards are far superior to conventional on-screen keyboards in terms of typing speed and accuracy.<\/p>\n

Tan\u2019s group also is working on haptic approaches that simulate sticky and smooth sensations. This can be accomplished through electrovibration\u2014alternating voltage applied to the glass surface\u2014to change the friction between the fingertip and the screen.<\/p>\n

Searching for the Killer App<\/h2>\n

So how will haptics change the computing experience?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all up to the imagination right now,\u201d Tan says. \u201cWe haven\u2019t really designed anything that has become mainstream enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"electrostatic

An electrostatic haptics prototype on which the gray area feels rough, like sandpaper, and the dotted line has a notched texture for scrolling.<\/p><\/div>\n

The field has come a long way since 1996, when Tan earned her Ph.D. and had to explain the term \u201chaptics\u201d in her job talks at various computer-science and engineering departments. That was only a couple of years after the first computer-haptics symposium.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve made a lot of progress since then, because now everybody has some notion of what haptics is,\u201d she says. \u201cAt the time, pursuing a career in haptics research was a huge risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

But in many ways, the field is still in its infancy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not growing as fast as I would hope,\u201d Tan says. \u201cThe burden is on those of us who are working on it to really show the value of the work.\u201d<\/p>\n

One group likely to welcome advances in computer haptics: people with sensory impairments. Tan sees tremendous prospects for haptics to help not only people living with sight loss, but any person.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy philosophy,\u201d she says, \u201cis to design something that\u2019s so universal\u2014that\u2019s useful to everybody\u2014that everybody benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tan cites the example of corner cutouts on sidewalk curbs, which were intended to help wheelchair users but have proven valuable to many other people, including delivery drivers with dollies and parents pushing strollers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we really design multimodally, I think everybody benefits,\u201d she says. \u201cThen it\u2019s truly useful to people with hearing or visual impairments because it\u2019s all built into the same product.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tan has started interacting closely with the Accessibility<\/a> group at Microsoft, which provides her with insights into how blind people read maps, for example, or navigate a space. She also communicates with designers throughout the company on how haptics might help improve everyday interactions between people and their loved ones over a distance.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think anybody has the killer app yet,\u201d Tan says. \u201cWe\u2019re just trying lots of different things and seeing how people respond to them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe way we design computers today,\u201d Microsoft researcher Hong Tan says, \u201cit would seem that people only use their eyes.\u201d Sure, we tap on our device screens, slide our fingertips across the glass, and type on on-screen keyboards. Sometimes, we give voice commands and listen back. Our phones vibrate when a text arrives, and we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39507,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","msr-author-ordering":[],"msr_hide_image_in_river":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[194476,194456,194462],"tags":[211139,211148,211151,211154,211157,211145,211142],"research-area":[13552,13545],"msr-region":[],"msr-event-type":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-promo-type":[],"msr-podcast-series":[],"class_list":["post-284546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-devices-and-hardware","category-natural-language-processing","category-speech-and-dialog","tag-computer-haptics","tag-electrovibration","tag-key-click-feedback","tag-multisensory-experience","tag-sensory-impairments","tag-sina-com","tag-tactile-sensations","msr-research-area-hardware-devices","msr-research-area-human-language-technologies","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_event_details":{"start":"","end":"","location":""},"podcast_url":"","podcast_episode":"","msr_research_lab":[],"msr_impact_theme":[],"related-publications":[],"related-downloads":[],"related-videos":[],"related-academic-programs":[],"related-groups":[],"related-projects":[],"related-events":[],"related-researchers":[],"msr_type":"Post","byline":"","formattedDate":"August 5, 2014","formattedExcerpt":"\u201cThe way we design computers today,\u201d Microsoft researcher Hong Tan says, \u201cit would seem that people only use their eyes.\u201d Sure, we tap on our device screens, slide our fingertips across the glass, and type on on-screen keyboards. Sometimes, we give voice commands and listen…","locale":{"slug":"en_us","name":"English","native":"","english":"English"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39507"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284546"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":284576,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284546\/revisions\/284576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284546"},{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=284546"},{"taxonomy":"msr-region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-region?post=284546"},{"taxonomy":"msr-event-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-event-type?post=284546"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=284546"},{"taxonomy":"msr-post-option","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-post-option?post=284546"},{"taxonomy":"msr-impact-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-impact-theme?post=284546"},{"taxonomy":"msr-promo-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-promo-type?post=284546"},{"taxonomy":"msr-podcast-series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-podcast-series?post=284546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}