Vibed: a prototyping tool for haptic game interfaces

Abstract

Haptics in the form of vibrations in game interfaces have the potential to strengthen visual and audio components, and also improve accessibility for certain populations like people with deafblindness. However, building vibrotactile game interfaces is difficult and time consuming. Our research problem was how to make a prototyping tool that facilitated prototyping of vibrotactile game interfaces for phones and gamepads. The results include a description of the prototyping tool we built, which is called VibEd. It allows designers to draw vibrotactile patterns, referred to as vibes, that can easily be tested on phones and gamepads, and exported to code that can be used in game development. It is concluded, based on user tests, that a haptic game interface prototyping tool such as VibEd, can facilitate haptic game interface design and development, and by that contribute to game accessibility for persons with deafblindness.