Before the dominance of digital tools, most interface designs used
to have a physical surface that users could touch and feel. This
physical interaction was a great way to communicate certain
affordances to the user. Now, the rise of touchscreens in devices in
the last decade and the increasing dependency on such devices has
made the interaction between a person and a digital interface
important. One of the drawbacks of using digital interfaces is that
they rely a lot on the vision of the user. Take, for example, the
media system of a modern car. Most controls are embedded inside the
touch interface that the driver has to look at to interact with.
Operating the vehicle without visual attention becomes essential to
decrease potential distractions when engaging in a secondary
activity that requires focusing on the center console. This paper
aims to address the problem by exploring existing literature to find
solutions to improve the tactile experience of current touchscreen
technology. This paper concludes with the importance of tactile
feedback in touch interfaces and brings forth important factors for
creating an effective tactile feedback system. It also explores
alternative solutions to provide feedback through external devices,
which further enhances interaction by making use of the device’s
specific features to provide multi-modal input.
