The Eclectic User Experience of Combined On-Screen and On-Wrist Vibrotactile Feedback in Touchscreen Input

On-wrist vibrotactile feedback, such as provided through smartwatches, has been shown to have a positive impact on users' touch input performance with mobile devices, but the user experience of combined on-screen and on-wrist vibrations has been scarcely examined. In our experiment involving twenty-two participants, an eclectic three-faceted UX emerged: (i) both on-screen and combined on-screen and on-wrist vibrations resulted in high ratings with no significant differences in UMUX scores or user preferences; (ii) negatively-connoted UX descriptors, e.g., difficulty or complexity, generally revealed less favorable UX for combined on-screen and on-wrist vibrations; (iii) positively-connoted descriptors, e.g., enjoyment or efficiency, revealed that vibrations on the wrist were not detrimental to touchscreen input UX. We use our findings to propose future work opportunities in cross-device smartphone and smartwatch interactions, which we discuss through the lenses offered by two identified dichotomies of vibrotactile feedback technical implementation: on-fingertip vs. on-wrist and single-point vs. multi-point vibrations.