Multi-Haptics: Remote Tactile Feedback on Multitouch Surfaces

Multi-touch input using multiple fingertips or hands has become the de-facto standard for the interaction with interactive surfaces such as tablets, tabletops or interactive walls. For single touch input, the addition of synchronous tactile feedback has shown to be beneficial in terms of reducing error-rates, increasing interaction speed and minimizing visual load. However, to this day, the nonvisual communication of form, state and function of interactive elements has only been analyzed for single touch surfaces. We incorporate the notion of remote tactile feedback, i.e., the spatial separation of touch input and resulting tactile output on the user’s body to provide several synchronous haptic stimuli for users of multi-touch surfaces. In the paper, we present the results of a preliminary study and an ongoing study in which we analyze the role of remote tactile feedback for quantitative and qualitative metrics of multi-touch interactions.