Towards Textile User Interface Design Guidelines for Eyes-free Use

Abstract

Due to their haptics, textile interfaces are promising UIs to control devices eyes-free, e.g., in darkness or when controls are placed out of sight, but there are few haptic design guidelines for such interfaces. Therefore, we conducted five experiments investigating the space and size requirements of such textile controls and how users understand the orientation of textile interfaces not placed horizontally in front of them. Our participants preferred symbols to be larger than the literature suggests, they preferred larger controls when interfaces were placed vertically next to them, and they memorized symbols from a world-centric perspective when they were out of sight. Using our findings, we identified future directions for follow-up research on design guidelines for textile interfaces.