Touching Tales: Design Issues in Creating Haptic Content

Despite continual consumer demand for richer broadcast media, there have been few examinations of senses other than vision and hearing in this domain. This paper considers the role that touch may be able to play in future broadcast systems. We have begun to explore the addition of haptic cues to children’s cartoons, and through this process unearthed a number of practical design issues unique to this domain. Some of these are discussed in this paper, including how the psychological distinction between passive and active touch influences broadcast media, and how this in turn affects notions of interactivity. We also discuss focus as it relates to the haptic display of individual aspects of complex scenes. The goal of this paper is to introduce this novel and unexplored topic, and to provide a discussion that motivates further research.