Do you remember your first kiss? Or that time you burned the roof of your mouth on a hot slice of pizza? What about playing tag or duck, duck, goose as a child? These are all instances where we're using touch to understand something. And it's the basis of haptic design.
還記得你的初吻嗎? 或是某次被熱騰騰的披薩燙傷了嘴呢? 還有童年玩的「鴨鴨鵝遊戲」 之類的碰了就跑的遊戲呢? 這些都是我們透過觸覺 來意識到某事的實例。 它是觸覺設計的基礎。
"Haptic" means of or relating to the sense of touch. And we've all been using that our entire lives. I was working on my computer when my friend, seeing me hunched over typing, walked over behind me. She put her left thumb into the left side of my lower back, while reaching her right index finger around to the front of my right shoulder. Instinctively, I sat up straight. In one quick and gentle gesture, she had communicated how to improve my posture. The paper I was working on at that very moment centered around developing new ways to teach movement using technology. I wanted to create a suit that could teach a person kung fu.
觸覺(Haptic)也就是 與碰觸相關的感覺。 我們一生都不停地在碰觸。 有次我在打電腦時, 朋友看到我駝著背打字, 就走到我的身後。 她把左手拇指放在我的左下背部, 右手食指勾住我的右肩前方。 本能地,我坐直了。 她用快而溫和的手勢 溝通如何改善我的姿勢。 那一刻我正在寫的論文主題正是 如何借助科技來教授動作。 我也想過要做一件衣服, 穿上它你就會打功夫。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
But I had no idea how to communicate movement without an instructor being in the room. And in that moment, it became crystal clear: touch. If I had vibrating motors where she had placed each of her fingers, paired with motion-capture data of my current and optimal posture, I could simulate the entire experience without an instructor needing to be in the room. But there was still one important part of the puzzle that was missing. If I want you to raise your wrist two inches off of your lap, using vibration, how do I tell you to do that? Do I put a motor at the top of your wrist, so you know to lift up? Or do I put one at the bottom of your wrist, so it feels like you're being pushed up? There were no readily available answers because there was no commonly agreed-upon haptic language to communicate information with.
但我不知道沒教練在場的狀況下 怎麼去溝通動作。 那一刻我清楚明白:用觸感。 假使在我身上那些她手指 所碰之處裝上振動馬達, 搭配動作捕捉數據,隨時 把我的姿勢與最佳姿勢相比, 我就可以模擬整個體驗, 無需教練親身在場。 至此仍有一個重要的關鍵待解。 我該怎麼樣用振動提示你 把手腕從大腿向上抬兩英寸呢? 應該把馬達裝在你的手腕上 讓你知道要抬起來, 還是裝在手腕下面, 感覺像是被往上推那樣呢? 沒有現成的答案, 因為沒有傳達訊息的 共通、既定觸覺語言。
So my cofounders and I set out to create that language. And the first device we built was not a kung fu suit.
因此我和我的合夥人 著手創造那語言。 我們做出來的第一個東西不是功夫裝。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
But in a way, it was even more impressive because of its simplicity and usefulness. We started with the use case of navigation, which is a simplified form of movement. We then created Wayband, a wrist-wearable device that could orient a user toward a destination, using vibrating cues. We would ask people to spin around and to stop in a way that they felt was the right way to go. Informally, we tried this with hundreds of people, and most could figure it out within about 15 seconds. It was that intuitive.
但在某種程度上,它更亮眼, 因為它簡單又實用。 我們從導航的用例開始, 它是種簡化的運動形式。 然後我們創建了 Wayband, 是一種戴在手腕的裝置, 可以將用戶引導到目的地, 使用振動提示的方式。 我們叫人們原地旋轉, 當他們感受到方向對了就停下來。 我們在數百人身上非正式地實驗過, 多數人約 15 秒內可以搞清楚。 就是這麼直覺。
Initially, we were just trying to get people out of their phones and back into the real world. But the more we experimented, the more we realized that those who stood to benefit most from our work were people who had little or no sight. When we first approached a blind organization, they told us, "Don't build a blind device. Build a device that everyone can use but that's optimized for the blind experience." We created our company WearWorks with three guiding principles: make cool stuff, create the greatest impact we can in our lifetimes and reimagine an entire world designed for touch.
最初,我們只想要人們擺脫手機, 回到現實的世界。 但是我們越試驗 就越意識到受益最多的 是那些全盲或近盲的人。 當我們首次接觸盲人組織時, 他們告訴我們: 「不要設計盲人專用的設備。 設計一個人人都可以使用的設備, 但是盲胞更能因之受益的設備。」 我們創建了 WearWorks 公司, 它有三個指導原則: 製作很酷的產品, 在我們有生之年發揮最大的影響力, 並且重新建構專為觸覺 而設計的世界。
And on November 5, 2017, Wayband helped a person who was blind run the first 15 miles of the New York City Marathon without any sighted assistance.
2017 年 11 月 5 日, Wayband 幫一個盲人 跑了紐約市馬拉松賽的 前 15 英里, 沒有明眼人陪跑。
(Applause)
(掌聲)
It didn't get him through the entire race due to the heavy rain, but that didn't matter.
裝置受到大雨影響,他沒有跑完全程, 但那並不重要。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
We had proved the point: that it was possible to navigate a complex route using only touch.
我們已證明這一點: 只靠觸感就可以導航複雜的路線。
So, why touch? The skin has an innate sensitivity akin to the eyes' ability to recognize millions of colors or the ears' ability to recognize complex pitch and tone. Yet, as a communications channel, it's been largely relegated to Morse code-like cell phone notifications. If you were to suddenly receive a kiss or a punch, your reaction would be instinctive and immediate. Meanwhile, your brain would be playing catch-up on the back end to understand the details of what just occurred. And compared to instincts, conscious thought is pretty slow. But it's a lightning bolt compared to the snail's pace of language acquisition. I spent a considerable amount of time learning Spanish, Japanese, German and currently Swedish, with varying degrees of failure.
那麼,為什麼要用觸感呢? 皮膚天生敏感性高, 有著類似眼睛識別 數百萬種顏色的能力, 或耳朵辨別複雜音高和音調的能力。 然而,作為溝通的管道, 皮膚基本上只被用來接收 摩斯代碼般的手機震動通知。 如果你突然被吻或被擊了一拳, 你必然本能和直接地反應。 與此同時,你的大腦還在想辦法趕上, 試圖了解剛剛發生的事情的細節。 有意識的思想比本能慢很多, 但若和學習語言的蝸速來比, 則快得有如閃電。 我花了相當多的時間學習 西班牙語、日語、德語, 目前正在學瑞典語, 全都不同程度地失敗了。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
But within those failures were kernels of how different languages are organized. That gave our team insight into how to use the linguistic order of well-established languages as inspiration for an entirely new haptic language, one based purely on touch. It also showed us when using language mechanics wasn't the best way to deliver information. In the same way a smile is a smile across every culture, what if there was some underlying mechanism of touch that transcended linguistic and cultural boundaries? A universal language, of sorts.
但在失敗中學到了 不同語言的組織方式, 使得我們團隊深入了解 如何把既定的語言順序 開發全新觸覺語言的靈感, 一個完全奠基於觸覺的語言。 它還向我們展示了 語言機制不是提供訊息的最佳方式。 就像微笑是跨文化的,同樣的, 是否也有一種觸覺機制是 超越語言和文化界限的呢? 類似一種全球通用的語言。
You see, I could give you buzz-buzz-buzz, buzz-buzz, and you would eventually learn that that particular vibration means "stop." But as haptic designers, we challenged ourselves. What would it be like to design "stop?" Well, based on context, most of us have the experience of being in a vehicle and having that vehicle stop suddenly, along with our body's reaction to it. So if I wanted you to stop, I could send you a vibration pattern, sure. Or, I could design a haptic experience that just made stopping feel like it was the right thing to do. And that takes more than an arbitrary assignment of haptic cues to meanings. It takes a deep empathy. It also takes the ability to distill human experience into meaningful insights and then into haptic gestures and products.
你看,如果我用這樣的震動模式, 二短一長 - 二短, 你最後終究會學到 那個振動意味著「停止」。 但身為觸覺設計師,我們得自我挑戰。 設計「停止」是什麼樣子呢? 應該要根據實際情況吧, 我們多數人有過這樣的經驗, 坐在車裡,突然一個緊急煞車, 我們身體當下的自然反應。 因此,如果我想讓你停下來, 我可以發個停止的振動模式給你。 或者,我可以設計一個觸覺體驗, 就讓你覺得停下來才是對的。 而這個設計不是任意地決定 觸覺方式及其代表的意義, 其中更需要的是深切的同理心。 還要能把人類的經驗 提煉成有意義的直覺, 再轉化為觸覺的手勢和產品。
Haptic design is going to expand the human ability to sense and respond to our environments, both physical and virtual. There's a new frontier: touch. And it has the power to change how we all see the world around us.
觸覺設計將擴展人類 感知和回應環境的能力, 實體和虛擬兩者皆然。 觸覺是一個全新尚待開發的領域。 它能改變我們看待周圍世界的方式。
Thank you.
謝謝。
(Applause)
(掌聲)