It is where the fun never stops!
Greetings from the YouFab Committee! This year we set up a brand new special award called the HAPTIC DESIGN AWARD!
Our guess is that when you hear the terms haptic design, you may be a little curious and want to find out more about these touch-based designs, but you don’t really know where to start. Are we right? If so, then you really must check out this blog, which introduces three different types of haptic designs. It includes simple and easy-to-understand examples together with practical tips, so be sure to check it out for yourself! You may be inspired to create your own design entry for the HAPTIC DESIGN AWARD! Well, that’s our hope anyway!
1. More happiness at your fingertips!
Some of the most fundamental and comprehensible examples of haptic design are those that allow us to feel joy through our sense of touch.
Stealing the limelight in 2016 on the crowd-funding site Kickstarter, the Fidget Cube is a revolutionary gadget that relieves psychological stress from boredom and anxiety. The cube has six sides that feature something to fidget with. There is something to press, rotate, roll, or simply just enjoy the feel of it in your hand. Incidentally, we bet you’ll be surprised to know that a whopping USD6,465,690 was raised to put this fundamental haptic design product on store shelves.
Fidget Cube
Here’s another example of how haptic design enhances joy for us. Write More is a device that puts the fun in writing, as it magnifies the sound of pencil to paper when you write or draw. The kids love it!
Write More
There are also those fidget spinners that have taken the world by storm and become a global toy sensation mainly because they just feel so amazing to play around with. These type of fidget gadgets bring people and objects together through the pure pleasure and addictive nature of haptic design.
2. Imparting emotions through touch
Haptic design gives us the ability to impart real emotions to objects and occurrences. It gives us the power to eliminate issues which are hard to grasp or wrap our minds around, and these designs also have the potential to inspire us.
Have you heard of Ontenna? It’s a new interface device that allows deaf people to feel sound with their hair! It serves as an interface between people and the world around them, and makes it possible for hearing-impaired people to experience the world of sound through touch.
Ontenna
Another example of amazing haptic content offering tactile experiences, is Namie Amuro’s music video of her single, Golden Touch, which is a new style of cinematography that makes it appear as though the viewer is in control of the colorful imagery by actually touching things that appear in the video clip with their own fingertip.
Golden Touch
3. Connecting with feelings and empathy
Hugging makes us feel reassured and shaking someone’s hand builds a sense of trust. Touch has the power to create new emotions through communication.
You know, touch also has the potential to be used as a tool to convey emotions instead of language. Check out this experimental device called the Mega-Futuristic Experiential Public Telephone, which enables communication through tactile sensations alone.
Mega-Futuristic Experiential Public Telephone
The installation Vibracion Cajon converts instrumental sounds into vibrations, allowing you to enjoy communication with others through an instrumental performance, which is another example of a HAPTIC DESIGN that connects people through empathy and emotions.
Vibracion Cajon
otodama by Vibracion Cajon from MontBlanc Pictures on Vimeo.
We hope you got a feel for the scope of haptic design and a glimpse at what it is capable of! We can’t wait to seeHAPTIC DESIGN AWARD entries that are even more mind-blowing and exciting that we could ever imagine!
