Design of a Haptic Language for Gestural Control of Smart Lights

Gijs Verhoeven (1, 2, 3, 4) , Vincent Levesque (3, 4)

1 University of Twente
2 EEMCS - Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science [Twente]
3 ETS - Ecole de Technologie Supérieure [Montréal]
4 Department of Software and IT Engineering

Ubiquitous haptics draws from ubiquitous computing and aims to integrate haptics in everyday life to render interaction with technology seamless and intuitive. We describe an explorative design process that takes ubiquitous haptics as a starting point and aims to discover opportunities for haptics in a near future in which smart objects and haptic feedback are omnipresent. Through hands-on experimentation and brainstorming, we conceived a concept for the use of haptic feedback as part of a gestural language for interactions with connected devices, and more specifically with smart lights. The concept was developed and validated by exploring usage scenarios and experimenting with low-fidelity Wizard-of-Oz prototypes and high-fidelity prototype in virtual reality. This process led to the design of an intuitive and seamless user experience for smart lighting control based on a synergy between gestures and haptic feedback.

Domains: Computer Science [cs]

Gijs Verhoeven, Vincent Levesque. Design of a Haptic Language for Gestural Control of Smart Lights. International Workshop on Haptic and Audio Interaction Design, 2020, Montreal, Canada. ⟨hal-02901208⟩