Designing Large Sets of Haptic Icons with Rhythm

Haptic icons (brief tangible stimuli with associated meanings) are a new way to convey information, but are difficult to design in large quantities due to technological and perceptual constraints. Here, we employ rhythm in combination with frequency and amplitude to systematically produce 84 distinguishable tactile stimuli for use as icons. The set’s large size is made possible by an analysis of how users perceptually organize tactile rhythm. Through our evaluation, we find that the two primary characteristics by which users distinguish its tactile rhythms are note length and unevenness.