SlickFeel: Sliding and Clicking Haptic Feedback on a Touchscreen

  • Hong Z Tan

We present SlickFeel, a single haptic display setup that can
deliver two distinct types of feedback to a finger on a
touchscreen during typical operations of sliding and clicking.
Sliding feedback enables the sliding finger to feel interactive
objects on a touchscreen through variations in friction. Clicking
feedback provides a key-click sensation for confirming a
key or button click. Two scenarios have been developed to
demonstrate the utility of the two haptic effects. In the first,
simple button-click scenario, a user feels the positions of
four buttons on a touchscreen by sliding a finger over them
and feels a simulated key-click signal by pressing on any of
the buttons. In the second scenario, the advantage of haptic
feedback is demonstrated in a haptically-enhanced thumbtyping
scenario. A user enters text on a touchscreen with two
thumbs without having to monitor the thumbs’ locations on
the screen. By integrating SlickFeel with a Kindle Fire tablet,
we show that it can be used with existing mobile touchscreen
devices.

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