Building a navigable fine texture design space

Friction modulation technology enables the creation of textural effects on flat haptic displays. However, an intuitive and manageably small design space for construction of such haptic textures remains an unfulfilled goal for user interface designers. In this paper, we explore perceptually relevant features of fine texture for use in texture construction and modification. Beginning with simple sinusoidal patterns of friction force that vary in frequency and amplitude, we define irregularity as a third building block of a texture pattern and show it to be a scalable feature distinct from the others using multidimensional scaling. Additionally, subjects' verbal descriptions of this 3-dimensional design space provide insight into their intuitive interpretation of the physical parameter changes.