More on Haptic feedback for touch screens  |  May 14, 2009  

A number of years ago, former EDS Fellow, Randy wrote a blog entry about touch feedback being a problem for virtual screens. It looks like those haptic feedback are coming a bit closer to production.

It's funny how adding another dimension to the user interaction experience can make it so much more rewarding. Enabling a touch screen to "touch back", and provide a range of textures for your experience and provide new depth to a virtual reality experience could have some very interesting applications. The article in IEEE Spectrum describes how eventually you could use the display to "tell how a garment feels".

It looks like LG, Samsung, and many others are doing this in a small way on their phones, but if all they're doing is using the phones vibration ringer to provide gross vibration feedback, it could be added to all the Smartphone devices before long.

I can just imagine the possibilities for feedback you can provide a user on their interaction with corporate systems if touch screen devices become more common in the workplace.

Charlie Bess
EDS' Next Big Thing Blog