Overview of meta-analyses investigating vibrotactile versus visual display options

Abstract

The literature is replete with studies that investigated the effectiveness of vibrotactile displays; however, individual studies in this area often yield discrepant findings that are difficult to synthesize. In this paper, we provide an overview of a comprehensive review of the literature and meta-analyses that organized studies to enable comparisons of visual and tactile presentations of information, to yield information useful to researchers and designers. Over six hundred studies were initially reviewed and coded along numerous criteria that determined appropriateness for meta-analysis categories. Comparisons were made between conditions that compared (a) adding a tactile cue to a baseline condition, (b) a visual cue with a multimodal (visual and tactile) presentation, and (c) a visual cue with a tactile cue. In addition, we further categorized within these comparisons with regard to type of information, that ranged from simple alerts and single direction cues to more complex tactile patterns representing spatial orientation or short communications. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.