Design and Evaluation of Hapticons for Instant Messaging

Instant Messaging (IM) is a popular chatting platform on the internet and increasingly permeates teenage life. Even intimate and emotional content is discussed. As touch is a powerful signal for emotional content, haptic signals, and especially hapticons could contribute to overcome the inevitable loss of subtle non-verbal communication cues. This paper introduces hapticons (small force or vibration patterns that can be used to communicate emotions and feelings) to enrich instant messaging. The open source Hapticon Design Tool and the Haptic Instant Messenger that are introduced, provide a framework to combine communication of textual messages with haptic effects. Also the design process and evaluation methods for meaningful hapticon design are discussed.