Neutrino

More times than I can count, I’ve gotten the question, “could you help me figure out how to enhance my physical prototype with haptics?” Design agencies and university labs know the Arduino platform, but found it difficult to rapidly iterate haptic designs.

The platform we created to address this need was targeted at academics and design agencies. It consisted of an Arduino daughter board with 118 pre-designed effects, supporting 3 different actuators. Documentation and example code were provided. The packaged enabled you to plug, play, and trigger professionally-designed haptic effects.

I played a PM role for this project, and was responsible for needs finding, platform architecture, and effect design. I also served as the liaison to external users at design agencies and universities.

Our goal was to enable a community of innovators to use haptics to meet their goals. Success was mixed. By the time we released the kit, interest was shifting from virtual buttons to immersive media, and we soon realized pre-designed effects had less appeal than flexible tools that let designers define their own haptic signals.