• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.141-150
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• 2013

In this paper, the learnability of haptic icons was tested as a way of conveying turn-by-turn directions to users involved in navigation interactions with commercial smartphones. To do this, six most distinctive haptic icons were identified from those having different duration of each pulse, interval between pulses, and rhythm. Associations between the selected haptic icons and 3 pairs of navigation directions were analyzed using data gathered from 30 subjects by 7 point Likert scale. The haptic icons were then assigned to proper directions based on the results from that stereotype analysis. The results showed that the commercial smartphone with one linear motor at a fixed location is not capable of making hapticons to have clear directional stereotypes. The hapticons with poor stereotypes has no advantage in learnability compared to those of random assignment.