Feasibility study of online shopping with tactile user experience

• Main Author: Chen, Ningshuang
• Other Authors: Alexei Sourin
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Computer science and engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/70585
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

With the increasing popularity of online shopping in the last decade, there has been a trend towards creating a more immersive life-like shopping environment for online shoppers. Haptic technology serves as a potential interaction option for e-commerce companies to adopt. However, the feasibility of incorporating haptic interaction into online shopping has not been proved, nor has the extent of the usefulness of such incorporation. Thus, this project explores the feasibility and meaningfulness of integrating data-driven haptic feedback into online shopping product browsing experience using a desktop haptic device. In this project, haptic weight, geometry, and material simulation based on real-life measurements are provided as additional means for shoppers to gather product information. A user study was conducted to examine users’ attitude towards online shopping with the haptic interaction features mentioned above. The result revealed users’ significant preference towards haptic-based product browsing over that provided by traditional online shopping regarding weight, geometry information and overall browsing satisfaction.