Immersion is one of the longest-standing sponsors at MEX, first participating in 2007 and returning every year since to support the MEX community. It is a great pleasure to welcome them back to MEX in May 2011 as a Pathway sponsor and to recognise their ongoing commitment to supporting new thinking in mobile user experience.

In addition to their active participation in the MEX working sessions, Immersion’s user experience researcher David Birnbaum will address several of the MEX Pathway topics in a presentation.

Immersion is a pioneer of haptics, the technology which adds tactile feedback to digital products. Its platform is embedded in a huge range of devices, from medical and automotive to consumer electronics and mobile phones. Samsung, LG and Nokia all use the Immersion platform to add haptics to their device portfolio.

“Immersion is pleased to continue our relationship with MEX,” said Christophe Ramstein, CTO of Immersion and a MEX speaker alumnus, with a memorable presentation at the May 2009 event. He explained: “MEX provides an engaging forum to share the latest research and technology in the mobile UX community – its structured brainstorming serves as a foundation for creating next-generation multi-modal user experiences.”

Advances in haptics are raising interesting possibilities in several areas of mobile user experience, from improving the usability of 3D interfaces, adding new sensory experiences and, in the longer term, augmenting the virtualisation of physical form factors.

Immersion is contributing several demo devices to inspire new thinking in the MEX working sessions, including the virtual guitar demo, which uses the company’s MOTIV development platform to simulate the tactile experience of strumming guitar strings on the touchscreen of an Android phone. I tried it out myself at Mobile World Congress this year (see video below) and was amazed.

MEX is on 4th/5th May 2011 in London.