What Does an Exclusive Flashlight Feel Like?: A study on the relationship between product properties and haptic product experiences

When designing everyday product it is important to consider all human senses, including the haptic sense. An experimental user study was accomplished with the overall purpose to develop further knowledge on the relationship between haptic product properties and people's haptic experiences. The study encompassed twenty-four participants exploring three designs of three different types of products. The results demonstrate the feasibility of investigating the character of a haptic experience as well as its intensity by using an instrument based on a differential semantic scale. This way, haptic profiles could be retrieved for all products investigated. Relating the haptic profiles to comments by the participants in the study provided the possibility to relate specific experiences, differences and similarities between the products, to specific product properties