Haptic Messaging
by Imran Ali
In Spring 2006, I had the pleasure of spending a day working with students from Milan’s Interaction Design Institution (IDI).
Though I was there to work with students on a series of digital identity design explorations, some of the most thought provoking projects I saw were drawn from Oren Horev’s Shapeshifters, notably the Tactophone, a handset with an active, tactile surface.
Though conceptual, Tactophone illustrates where ‘touch’ may play a powerful role in messaging. Not simply iPhone-like touchscreens or Sony’s ’shake-control’, but a completely tangible and tactile surface that might deliver ‘touch-tones’ from callers.
During my visit, other students were already beginning to explore where Horev’s work could enhance their own. One locative project, Herescan, examines the immediate area for geo-tagged content and alerts the user to items of interest. Future suggested iterations of Herescan may use haptics to alert the user with subtle touches that don’t distract the user.
It isn’t difficult to concieve of a future where messaging isn’t a jarring, autistic ‘vibrate’ for every incoming message, but perhaps a gentle stroke from a loved one or a playful pinch from a friend. Mobile social networks with some inherent intimacy algorithms, coupled with various tangible media may bring us a future of haptic messaging that subtly alerts us to the nature of a message using one of our most powerful senses.
