Existing and Future Guidance on Tactile and Haptic Interactions

Abstract

Tactile and haptic interaction is becoming increasingly important in both assistive technologies and special purpose computing environments. ISO 9241 Ergonomics of Human-System Interaction is intended to deal with all modalities of human-computer interactions. While some individual parts do include some general guidance that can apply to tactile and haptic interactions, there are no existing parts providing detailed guidance relating to the particulars of tactile and haptic interactions. This lack of standards leads to serious ergonomic difficulties for users of multiple, incompatible, or conflicting tactile/haptic devices/applications. However, considerable research exists that can be used as the basis for a set of tactile and haptic interaction guidelines.

This paper provides an historical perspective of research and standardization efforts and moves towards providing an understanding of the goals of the emerging set of tactile and haptic interaction standards. It discusses how standards are developed and focuses on newly initiated efforts to create a set of parts within ISO 9241 to deal with tactile and haptic interactions. These parts will include Part 900 Introduction, Part 910 Framework, Part 920 Guidelines, Part 930 Multimodal combinations, Part 940 Evaluation methods, and Part 971 Interfaces to publicly available devices. The paper also explains how the reader can get involved in these standardization activities.