Designing a Game for Haptic Interfaces to Uncover Gestural Pattern in Children

Haptic computing uses a variety of vibro-tactile patterns that affect touch-based interactions. Therefore, there is an opportunity to design haptic interfaces to collect, analyze and uncover gestural patterns in children, particularly children with sensory processing differences such as those exhibited by Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). In this paper, using user-centered techniques, we select two vibro-tactile patterns to guide the design of Feel and Touch, a haptic game that could be develop for different haptic interfaces, such as mobile, wearable, and ultrasonic. Feel and Touch uses ramp and flat vibration patterns to mimic vibrations on spiders’ legs when building a web. Feel and Touch has two types of activities: structured ones, where children must either tap or drag as indicated, and an open-ended activity where they can freely interact with the game. We close by discussing untapped opportunities of haptic computing to understand differences in tactile processing.