A touch of technology in your own hands.
After 7 months of beta testing, Interhaptics just released its most ambitious project to date: a mixed reality development suite for deploying haptics across platforms for both head-mounted displays and mobile devices.
Eric Vezzoli, head of the French software company, and his team built Haptic Composer and Interaction Builder to push extended reality experiences to the next level. According to their research with both indie developers and large tech firms, the suite facilitates 90% faster development for designing and integrating haptic feedback into mixed reality projects than what’s already on the market. The timing couldn’t be better—now the technology and a consumer base exist to make Vezzoli’s dreams come true.
“3.5 billion humans have a haptics device in their pocket, and no one is really leveraging it,” commented Vezzoli in reference to a study by international business data firm, Statista. “Interhaptics is going to change that. We empower digital creators to engage on a deeper level with their customers through the sense of touch.”
Long inspired by the pivotal work of Apple as a touchstone in the assimilation of haptics experiences, he is concerned that many contemporary developers and creators are not thinking outside the box; by not doing so they miss a significant chance to connect with their users in a tangible way.
“When designers leave out haptics, they force their users to suffer fatigue,” he says. “Haptics are sometimes even more important than sound design; you mute your phone, but not always the feeling of haptic feedback.” Vezzoli believes good, intuitive haptic design can make or break a larger user retention strategy for bonding with a product and piece of hardware.
“[Don’t underestimate the importance of the] physical aspects of haptics and the unconscious sense of presence it generates,” he goes on. “Communication is visual for a small part, but there is a lot of communication [that comes] with body language and touch, especially now when we can communicate on video calls, which lack the physical contact [of meeting in-person]. [Touch] is hard-wired into human perception as a baseline of human emotion and communication.”
Pinpointing multiple areas where this is the case, Vezzoli shares where developers can make the most impact: notifications or UX/UI confirmation, immersion for emotional connection, contextual or spatial awareness, such as smart clothing or wearables, and remote presence applications.
“We believe that the XR content developers should focus on implementation of the use cases, and not on interaction mechanics,” says Zlatko Vidrih, Interhaptics’ co-founder. “Our vision is to provide the interaction and haptics design tools to ease and speed up the development and deployment processes.”
Begin using Interhaptics’ new development suite by visiting their website and requesting a demo or signing up for their user portal.
Image Credit: Interhaptics
