Hearing impaired people have the need, ability and right to enjoy music, however modern hearing aid technologies still unable to meet their needs for music perception and appreciation, which is not conducive to their social interaction and self-development. This paper firstly focuses on the needs and preferences of hearing impaired people in music activities, and emphasizes that the common way for deaf people to participate in music activities is to feel the vibration of sound waves through tactile channel. Secondly, it summarizes the advantages of tactile stimulation in representing auditory information, as well as the expressiveness competence, limitations and design methods of vibrotactile music, and reviews related works of wearable and static vibrotactile music devices. Tactile channel has advantages in several aspects such as cognitive load, temporal sequence, naturalness and immersiveness etc, not only it can compensate for hearing loss and enhance hearing perception, but also carry emotional communication. It also has limitations such as low resolution and difficulty in conveying high-frequency information. Finally, this paper proposes several research directions of UX design in the future, to provide reference for researchers in related fields.

 hearing impaired people  /  music experience  /  vibrotactile music  /  sensory substitution design