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Dominik Bial, Dagmar Kern, Florian Alt, Albrecht Schmidt
Enhancing Outdoor Navigation Systems Through Vibrotactile Feedback
In Proceedings of CHI '11 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Vancouver, BC, Canada, May 07-12. ACM, New York, NY, USA. 1273-1278. ISBN 978-1-4503-0268-5 (bib)

While driving many tasks compete for the attention of the user, mainly via the audio and visual channel. When designing systems depending upon providing feedback to users (e.g., navigation systems), it is a crucial prerequisite to minimize influence on and distraction from the driving task. This becomes even more important when designing systems for the use on motorbikes; space for output devices is scarce, as people are wearing helmets visual feedback is often difficult due to lighting conditions, and audio feedback is limited. In a first step we aimed at creating an understanding as to how information could be communicated in a meaningful way using vibrotactile signals. Therefore, we investigated suitable positions of actuators on the hand, appropriate length of the vibration stimulus, and different vibration patterns. We built a first prototype with 4 vibration actuators attached to the fingertips and asked 4 participants to test our prototype while driving. With this work we envision to lay the foundations for vibrotactile support in navigation systems.ht