Reimagining haptic feedback by learning from how people emotionally react to real-world textures — designing touch that's joyful, not just functional.
Human touch communicates beyond words — it carries emotion and intent. A single touch travels to the brain, generates an emotional response, and decodes a kind of secret message. That chain is what I wanted technology to learn.
Skin meets a texture in the real world.
The sensation travels and is processed.
A feeling is generated — calm, joy, unease.
Touch becomes a message we understand.
Haptic technology uses touch and vibration to communicate sensations to a user. We already accept it in small doses, in two familiar places:
Game controllers rumble to make a moment land — the most immersive haptics most people feel.
A phone screen mimics the sensation of pressing a physical button — useful, but purely mechanical.
As a Microsoft article notes, today's tactile offerings are mostly limited to buzz — vibrations from internal motors nested inside the device. It notifies, then it's gone. Compared to visuals that grab attention and audio that engages, touch is treated as the lowest-bandwidth afterthought — and AR/VR is already far ahead of the phone in your pocket.
After collecting qualitative data on haptic feedback and its usage, the verdict was consistent — functional, fleeting, and occasionally irritating.
"It's not something that sparks joy — it's just functional, to some extent."
On everyday phone haptics"Haptics makes me feel anxious sometimes, because of the sudden buzz."
On abrupt feedback"It doesn't have a long-lasting impact — it's there to notify, then it's gone."
On memorability"Immersive in games, but in phones it's limited to just awareness."
On the AR/VR gapI tracked how people felt about typing haptics across a four-minute session, in four phases. Feedback that started neutral drifted toward negative — the buzz that helps at first begins to grate.
To improve tactile feedback, I first had to understand touch in the real world. So I designed an experiment — conducted under Dr. Dinesh Chhabra in the Psychology department at Delhi University — to explore the emotions different textures evoke, without any visual or auditory influence.
The setup: participants wore an eye mask and noise-cancelling headphones, touched each material, and rated the intensity on a 0–5 Likert scale while I logged facial and behavioral responses.
Water was universally calming across all participants — a reliable anchor for gentle, positive feedback.
The acupressure mat triggered negative emotion in nearly everyone. Sharp, abrupt textures read as a threat.
Unlike a phone buzz, sharp-texture discomfort persisted — proof touch can leave a lasting impression.
This step was crucial: translating real-life insights into feedback a device can actually produce. Each finding became a principle to design against.
Dynamic backgrounds that respond to touch and gesture, generating feedback that simulates real textures — water rippling under a fingertip, grass brushing past. Built on the texture-emotion map, the wallpaper turns an idle screen into a calming, multisensory surface instead of a static image.
Personal haptic ringtones — tailor the intensity, frequency, and pattern of vibration alerts to your own preference.
Loading and downloads map progress to vibration strength, ramping up to a distinct burst when the task completes.
Algorithms tune feedback to behavior, preference, and environment — softer in quiet moments, clearer when needed.
Moving touch from pure notification to emotional engagement — interactions that feel considered, not mechanical.
Feedback that resonates builds a more present, joyful relationship with everyday devices.
A reusable texture-emotion map that other designers can build on — research that outlives the project.
Customizable, soothing, non-intrusive feedback opens accessibility uses for sensory-sensitive users.