This week, we dived into development of the chosen prototypes, but at first, we started the week with a department-wide invitation to test our haptic patterns without VR.
Haptic Patterns playtesting
Using the list of haptic patterns we developed last week, we came up with a playtest plan for where we play the patterns on the gloves, and have playtesters point on the screen, which image best describes what they feel.
Our goals are to 1. determine which haptic patterns are clearly identifiable without context. 2. what imageries are sparked by the haptic patterns itself. To do so, we generated a list of haptic patterns by categorizing parameters found in research, and conducted a playtest with playtesters trying out the 15 patterns, describing their sensational feelings (sensitivity), trying out different gestures that might go well with the patterns, and talking about their wild guesses of what those patterns are, and giving feedback on how the patterns could better represent what we intended it to be after we revealed what we were simulating.
The list of haptics patterns are: Explosion, Poke, Breathing, Slap, Tension, Stun, Crushing, Residual Impact, Heartbeat, Heat, Pinch, Train Track, Select, Chainsaw, Stroke.
What we learned
There were extremely interesting results that came out of this playtest. We’ll list it out here:
- Certain haptic events can mean multiple things because they are ambiguous enough.
- For example, explosion and train track, while both of them included rumbling feeling (one made from a WAV file of an explosion, and one made to simulate putting your hand on the ground as the train approaches), without context, people relied on the sounds, or looked through the list of pictures, and decided that they could be absorbing energy, hand dissolving, stun, or chainsaw!
- Certain haptic events can only explicitly mean something because they match people’s sensed memories so accurately.
- The certain haptic patterns include, heartbeat, poke/tap, pinch.
- This disparity is more on lack of context and when filled gains immediate realization.
- Context includes movement (gestures), visual hints, and audio feedback.
- For example, slap and crushing were immediately recognized when the movements of slapping and crushing were executed, whereas previously they were described to be “random”.
- Haptics needs events to happen in order to make the most sense for something other than basic hand actions.
- For example, chainsaw was almost always correctly identified, but people were mostly unsure, because they have different imaginations towards how a chainsaw is (are we holding it, is it the start of a chainsaw, etc). A hand action is not sufficient for understanding.
- People move their fingers according to the vibrations.
- In stroke and crushing, people unconsciously curl their fingers according to where the vibrations are happening. They even start doing the crushing hand movements just because the pattern intensifies.
Slap, Pinch, and Heartbeats
To streamline development, as our discussion decided during retrospectives after quarters so as not to get lost in the multiple prototypes happening everywhere and all the time (minimum 3 prototypes happening all at once in a room), we decided to use Trello as a centralized communication space to see overviews of a prototype, with a overview card added for each prototype list.
Redesigning the prototypes
After talking with many playtesters during the haptic pattern playtest, we decided our prototypes should be less arbitrary and more focused on our goal to assess the effectiveness of the pattern, as well as give space for change of contexts.
Some 3D Model Showcase
Other updates
We also finalized the design of our half sheet, poster, and logo. We also shot a social media reel to share about our project in official ETC channels.
Next steps
Our next step is to bring our prototypes back to Playtest Night, but this time, testing with different contexts and how they can be tweaked for a different emotion.