Haptic technology could act as the key in actualizing the physicality expected in many experiences such as in virtual reality, gaming, education and affective communication.

However, with so many types of haptic technologies out there, such as smartphones/watches, game controllers, and more, what is the best means for designing with haptic technology to support a physical experience?

This challenge is what I sought to address in my time as a student at the Sensory Perception and Interaction (SPIN) group at the University of British Columbia by researching the conceptual and technical design processes of haptic interactions.

In one project, I worked with a PhD student on a haptic effect prototyping tool called Macaron, that allowed haptic designers to create, refine, and mix elements of different vibrotactile effects to quickly create new effects for smartphones and smartwatches. My role was to develop quality of life features such as saving/loading effects using the React framework. The tool is linked to the left panel.

In another project, I worked with another PhD student to research and conceptually design an interface for tuning the affective and pragmatic qualities of vibrations such that they would meet the demands of various situations that smartphone/watch users would appreciate (eg. useful notifications, affective communication, etc.). The associated publication is linked to the left panel.

I also worked with secondary school students to identify possible ways for haptic technology to support educational experiences. We analyzed existing STEM and classroom approaches, in order to ideate possible haptic designs that would teach STEM concepts in a physical manner. The students practiced core HCI research methodologies such as user interviews, cognitive walkthroughs, focus group interviews, qualitative analysis and much more.

My Master’s thesis systematically assessed the literature of different academic communities and compared their design practices in creating haptic applications. Specifically, the interactive design and engineering/psychological communities were characterized on the technical and conceptual aspects of designing haptic applications. The results suggested different ways in which each community's strengths/gaps in haptic design could be bolstered by the practices of another community.

Life is full of wonderful fleeting moments, but how can we document it without obtrusively pulling out a phone, or awkwardly pulling out a notebook to write down how we feel about a moment?

This concept served as the inspiration for the "Lifemarks" project in an undergraduate course in advanced Human Computer Interaction techniques (CPSC 444). In a team, we followed a design thinking-like process for systematically understanding possible user needs and approaches to life documentation, and used this knowledge to create new unobtrusive ways to document life’s passing moments.

Our solution consisted of a simple wearable device, powered by Arduino, that could be “clicked” to mark an important moment in a day. Users could then later revisit the mark via a web interface that would have sufficient metadata that could trigger the necessary memory to fill in the remaining moment details.

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With life and work being shared online, issues in organization are bound to occur. For example, when relationships end, should shared files live or die? Or in group projects, how would one negotiate file deletion in the case of saving personal data space?

These were the types of questions that drove our team to understand how collaboration currently occurs in various online file sharing systems (Google Drive, Dropbox) in order to obtain a sense of how these systems can be redesigned to suit the nuances of file sharing under different social circumstances.

For a graduate HCI project course (CPSC 554m), our team conducted an extensive field study complete with interviews and qualitative analysis to understand different users and how they respectively approached shared file collaboration.

In terms of insights, it was found that turn-taking was an essential activity that was currently reliant on a seperate communication service (eg. email, Facebook Messenger, Slack). Additionally, a notion of role-taking (whether implicit or explicit) was often conducted by team members in activities such as organizing files/tasks. The notion of ownership of online shared files was overall found to be fluid and dynamic (eg. earned through contributions of content, whoever created the original files, etc.). Conflicts in version tracking, and file naming/organizing conventions were also found to be common problems.

We used these findings to create various conceptual prototypes that addressed our insights of file sharing behaviour.

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