Do-It-Yourself Haptics, Part II: Interaction Design

This article is the second of a two-part series intended to be an introduction to haptic interfaces, their construction and application design. Haptic interactions employ mechanical, programmed physical devices which can be used for humancomputer communication via the sense of touch. In Part I of this series, we focused on the devices themselves: the classes of hardware schemes currently available or envisioned, the software components which drive them, and specific examples which can be built “on the kitchen table”. Here in Part II, we broach a topic which is coming into its own: between the vision of a particular utility that haptic feedback theoretically should enable, and the hardware capable of delivering the required sensations, is the problem of designing the interaction in a usable way.