A Design Study for the Haptic Vest as a Navigation System

Along with the arrival of the information age, people have started to pay attention to user experience design based on the human sensory organs. Instead of traditional user experience design based on vision and hearing, the experience based on tactile feedback has gradually become the mainstream in the field of product design. With this paper, we’re discussing the designing and production of the haptic vest, originating in our development of the haptic navigation system. We aim to actualize “symbolization” or “implication” of the haptic information. Haptic vest is a design of conveying electronic information using tactile feedback, with 60 actuators. Through these actuators, haptic vest provides users with navigational information. Thus, the vest not only serves as the medium for the actuators, the experience of tactility here comes from the vibrations of the actuators and the information it attempts to convey.