Anthropometrics: Important Aspects of Users’ Bodies - Foundations for Designing User-Centered Systems - page 71

Table 3.1 Types of users and tasks that can use a haptic interface
Users with poor vision
Teleoperators in areas where vision is not possible or not clear, such as muddy sea floors or areas
with high radiation or poor light
Drivers (cars, buses, tractors, miners) at night
Aircraft pilots and car drivers in fog
Users with poor or temporarily degraded sense of touch
Astronauts (and others, such as first responders) wearing gloves
People with insensate feet or hands (a common complication of diabetes) or who have reduced
sensitivity due to age
Teleoperators who would like more feedback about what is in their gripper

Users who need an additional input channel or need touch as the input channel
Cellular phone users in situations where audio ringing is not acceptable
Surgeons who need to know the elasticity and shape of organs during virtual surgery
Game players who could feel that they are being hit or are bumping a wall
Expanded from Kaczmarek and Bach-y-Rita ( 1995 )

(5) Touch provides another input modality. This is useful as primary modality for

users without sight. For sighted users, communication through touch does not
interfere materially with motor or other sensory functions.

(6) For telepresence, such as virtual reality applications, tactile feedback is very

important for obtaining the sense of immersion.

Many of the barriers to using haptic interfaces such as cost, power require-
ments, safety, and usefulness have now been overcome. This explains why there
are now so pervasive in smartphones and tablet computers.

3.4 Implications for System Design

System performance is a result of particular users doing particular tasks (using a
particular technology) in a particular context. When you are thinking about
designing interactive systems, you will need to consider all of these aspects
together.
Your users may have limited vision or even no vision at all. This can be a
permanent physical characteristic: they may be blind, for example. It may also be a
constraint of the task environment, for example when operating motor transport at
night or in foggy weather conditions. Currently, interfaces that make use of
auditory information are most important to people with visual impairment, but
haptic interfaces are becoming more important as the technology improves, and
the associated costs fall.