Feel-a-bump: Haptic feedback for foot-based angular menu selection

Abstract

Although diverse foot-based applications have been explored, foot-based menu selection is underexplored given its potential for low-fatigue secondary control input. Here, we are investigating whether the effect of adding haptic modalities can achieve higher performance in a menu selection task. We study the effect of auditory or vibrotactile feedback on selection performance in radial menus consisting of three, six and nine items. We compared no feedback to one auditory and two vibrotactile clicks, one across the foot, one localized to the movement direction. All feedback modalities allowed for rapid completion of menu selections and, while audio was generally preferred and our results suggest a superiority over haptics, the latter are still helpful in increasing selection accuracy. However, we argue that the difference is such that haptics could still be used with comparable performance in noisy environments or by users with auditory disabilities. Finally, we use an analysis of the number of attempts required to select the correct position, coupled with the number of errors, to make design recommendations for foot-based menus.