Haptic perception evaluation for the virtual prototyping of elastic hand-held product designs

Abstract

The haptic property of hand-held products is an important design consideration to guarantee products’ overall performance. This study proposes using haptic technologies in the virtual prototyping of flexible hand-held products. We put forward the metaphor of “held in hand”, characterised by mimicking the hand feel of products. Two haptic interfaces, one for precision/power grip and the other for scissor grip, are devised to support the embodiment of the metaphor. Two case studies, virtual prototyping for the designs of a toothbrush and a lady's hair clip, are implemented to showcase the two haptic interfaces and the metaphor. In the two experiments for the evaluation of the two prototyping systems, we found that the metaphor of “held in hand” and the two resultant haptic interfaces tend to enhance intuitiveness, perception and realism. This study provides a guideline for the virtual prototyping and haptic evaluation of flexible hand-held products.