Understanding Haptic Authoring Tools through a Taxonomy and Descriptive Analysis

Well-designed haptic interactions can improve user experience, but implementing them is often challenging. Haptic authoring tools help alleviate this difficulty, but they are suited for use with different hardware, applications, and practitioners. As such, novices to haptic design need to determine which tools, if any, are suitable for their projects. Similarly, practitioners improving authoring tools and extending them to new contexts need to understand advancements made in prior work to identify opportunities for improvement. Unfortunately, the haptic authoring literature is disorganized, hindering practitioners from succeeding in these tasks. To remedy these shortcomings, we developed a taxonomy of haptic authoring tools, used it to identify gaps in the literature, and analyzed trends in the development of the tools. We also present the systematic literature review and study with thirteen haptics practitioners that were used to produce these results, then discuss what they mean for future research in haptic authoring.