The College of Design congratulates Lin Hongnan for the successful defense of their dissertation, "Haptic interface design: Assist designers in understanding and prototyping haptic interfaces" on Thursday, April 14th, 2022.

Abstract:

Haptic interface design: Assist designers in understanding and prototyping haptic interfaces

Haptic interactions have the potential to benefit entertainment, work, education, transportation, and healthcare. However, haptic interactions in current consumer electronics are limited chiefly to vibrotactile notifications displayed by traditional actuators such as eccentric rotating mass (ERM) motors and linear resonant actuators (LRAs), and have not made the most of various research prototypes of haptic devices (such as those based on pneumatic, electro-hydraulic, and dielectric elastomer actuation). That is mainly because either the prototypes are bulky, high-maintenance, or expensive, or the generated haptic sensations do not impressively enhance user experience. To exploit the research outcomes in consumer products, it is necessary to involve designers who have user-centered design perspectives and expertise and could make distinct contributions, such as improving form factors and ease of use of haptic devices and appropriating haptic sensations in more scenarios for higher consumer acceptance. However, designers engaging in the haptic domain face barriers in two critical design activities. One is understanding haptic interfaces, which have grown extremely diversified and closely related to multiple disciplines, such as physiology, robotics, and material science. The other is prototyping haptic interfaces, which is a fundamental practice for design processes. How to empower industrial and interaction designers to effectively work with this emerging medium? In this dissertation, following research through design approaches, I seek the answers through designing, developing, and evaluating artifacts, including a morphological field, online library, prototyping method, and synthesize findings into an agenda for future research on assisting in designing haptic interfaces.