UX Impacts of Haptic Latency in Automotive Interfaces –

Literature Review and User Study

Originally published on July 2013; Revised March 2021

Amaya B. Weddle, Hua Yu, and Maggie Moreno
With updated introduction provided by Felipe Almeida

The implementation of touchscreens is almost ubiquitous in the automotive industry, with roughly 99% of the new vehicles produced in US coming with digital touchscreens. And although there are various benefits to the implementation of touchscreens and other smart surfaces in car interiors, these technologies can also create safety concerns due to their flat screens, lack of tactile confirmation, and attention-grabbing characteristics that can increase eyes-off-road period.
Surface actuation in automotive HMIs have been proposed through multimodal experiences to overcome the shortcomings of the touchscreens and the interplay between auditory and visual signals, including noise signals. Overall, adding haptics to the system can reduce visual overload, improve performance scores, decrease reaction time, and increase user pleasantness and task completion times.