SemFeel: a user interface with semantic tactile feedback for mobile touch-screen devices

One of the challenges with using mobile touch-screen devices is that they do not provide tactile feedback to the user. Thus, the user is required to look at the screen to interact with these devices. In this paper, we present SemFeel, a tactile feedback system which informs the user about the presence of an object where she touches on the screen and can offer additional semantic information about that item. Through multiple vibration motors that we attached to the backside of a mobile touch-screen device, SemFeel can generate different patterns of vibration, such as ones that flow from right to left or from top to bottom, to help the user interact with a mobile device. Through two user studies, we show that users can distinguish ten different patterns, including linear patterns and a circular pattern, at approximately 90% accuracy, and that SemFeel supports accurate eyes-free interactions.