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Writer's pictureJoshua Gibbs

How Do They Work? Haptic Feedback Feature

Updated: Nov 30, 2023

Haptic feedback is the use of touch to communicate with users.


Most people are familiar with the vibration in a mobile phone or the rumble in a game controller – but haptic feedback is much more than that.


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Human beings have five senses, but electronic devices communicate with us using predominantly just two: sight and hearing.


Haptic feedback (often shortened to just haptics) changes this by simulating the sense of touch. Not only can you touch a computer or other device, but the computer can touch you back.


Haptic feedback is a mode of communication rather than a specific technology or application. It’s nothing less than an entirely new way for machines and humans to communicate.

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Haptic feedback (sometimes described as ‘force feedback’) first entered game controllers in the late 1990s and is ubiquitous today.


What is haptic feedback on my Android phone?


Simply put, haptic feedback (commonly referred to as haptics) is the use of touch feedback to the end user. You know how your Android phone vibrates a tiny bit when you tap one of the navigation buttons? That’s haptics at work.


Do you use haptic feedback?


Haptic feedback is the use of touch to communicate with users. Most people are familiar with the vibration in a mobile phone or the rumble in a game controller – but haptic feedback is much more than that. … Haptic feedback is a mode of communication rather than a specific technology or application.


What is the difference between haptic and tactile?


Tactile Feedback is a type of Haptic Feedback. Haptic feedback is generally divided into two different classes: Tacticle and Kinesthetic. The difference between the two is quite complex, but at a high level: Kinesthetic: The things you feel from sensors in your muscles, joints, tendons.


What is haptic feedback on iPhone?


When you feel things like taps, vibration, and even pressing and releasing sensations when you tap an app icon or app feature/setting from your iPhone, that’s haptics! The Taptic Engine, a tiny motorized actuator inside your iPhone, powers haptic feedback.


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I could give many more examples (education and training, industrial, medical, smart home…). The real point, though, is that haptic feedback is best understood as a new tool in the hands of product designers, whatever sector they are in and whatever they are trying to communicate.


Haptic feedback in VR increases users’ sense of presence and agency.


Haptic feedback is a tool that both enhances audio-visual communication and opens up the possibility of creating new products and markets.


It’s a tool we are only just starting to understand the capabilities of, with a language we are still writing the dictionary for.

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