Data Physicalization with Haptic Variables: Exploring Resistance and Friction

Data Physicalizations have the potential to create interactive and more engaging data experiences and to make data more accessible to a broader range of users than those reached by visualizations alone. Tapping into this potential necessitates an understanding of the strengths/weaknesses of the different encoding variables available to designers, and when these variables can be employed to convey data. This work provides a preliminary investigation of two kinesthetic variables (resistance and friction) and their performance during the answering of minima/maxima/cluster questions. We evaluated both encoding modalities with users for their efficiency and effectiveness in a lab-based study. While neither modality was found to be significantly more efficient or accurate, most users preferred reading data through resistance.