Eyes-Free Graph Legibility: Using Skin-Dragging to Provide a Tactile Graph Visualization on the Arm

Abstract

Recent technological advances have enabled novel tactile displays which have mainly focused on providing shorter sensations for notifications and/or simple messages. These have primarily been used to enhance the user experience. In contrast, conveying information via data charts, such as a line graph, remains largely unexplored. To address this gap, we developed a tactile display prototype. Our prototype uses skin-dragging, a method to produce longer tactile perceptions from dragging a tip on the skin, as the primary means to convey the data. We postulate that if such an approach is successful, it could convey the data in eyes-free scenarios, an element common for on-the-go computing. In an experiment (n=12), we compare the recognition performance of graphs with two different skin-dragging properties, Full-Drag and Dot. The results show that participants performed both techniques equally well, but our Full-Drag technique was greatly preferred. We conclude with design guidelines for tactile displays that focus on graph representations.

In Summary

We explore the use of a tactile graph visualization. This has implications in conveying data to users while on-the-go and in eyes-free scenarios or for those with limited visual ability. As example, a runner may be out jogging while wanting to understand their performance; rather than looking at their smartwatch for metrics, the tactile graph could be represented on their arm for them to perceive.

Key Findings

• Full-Drag and Dot techniques performed equally well (perceptual accuracy across graph complexities)
• Full-Drag was greatly perferred by participants for the constant and continuous perception; this better allowed for a mental image of the graph being represented to be created by participants
• Dot benefitted from being able to better convey two consecutive data points at the same value

In More Detail

Please review our full paper (linked above) for study details, methodologies, and complete results.