Can we crowdsource Tacton similarity perception and metaphor ratings?

High-fidelity vibration actuators in recent mobile phones allow designers to crowdsource user evaluation of vibrotactile (VT) Tactons. Yet, little work has examined whether online crowdsourcing platforms can provide comparable results to lab studies. To address this question, we conducted two studies with iOS devices in the lab and crowdsourced settings. In Study I, 40 users provided pairwise similarity ratings for 12 VT Tactons that varied in their parameters (e.g., duration). In Study II, 40 new users rated pairwise similarities for 14 Tactons representing different metaphors (e.g., heartbeat). They also rated the Tactons’ match to the metaphors. In both studies, the resulting similarities and perceptual spaces strongly correlated in the lab and crowdsourced settings. Furthermore, 60% of the metaphor ratings were statistically equivalent in the two settings. We discuss the results and outline directions for future work on haptic crowdsourcing.