eNTERFACE ‘08: Project4 Design and Usability Issues for Multimodal Cues in Interface Design/ Virtual Environments eNTERFACE ‘08| Project 4

eNTERFACE ‘08: Project4 Project Team Team Leader: Catherine Guastavino, McGill University, Canada Team Members: Emma Murphy, McGill University, Canada Charles Verron, France Telecom R&D and Laboratoire de Mecanique et d'Acoustique de Marseille (LMA), France Camille Mousette, Ume Institute of Design, Sweden Juhwan Lee, University of Oxford, UK

eNTERFACE ‘08: Project4 Project Proposal To examine usability issues for a multimodal, audio-haptic interface by Investigating issues of integration between audio and haptic modalities for interface design in virtual environments Identifying what type of information is best conveyed through each modality The main focus of this project will be to run usability tests to investigate issues of integration and effectiveness of information delivery between audio and haptic modalities.

eNTERFACE ‘08: Project4 Background Various studies have indicated that the use of non-speech audio and haptics can help improve access to graphical user interfaces (Mynatt and Weber, 1994; Ramstein et al., 1996), by reducing the burden on other senses, such as vision and speech. It is proposed that an interface involving a target finding task with audio and haptic (touch) feedback is relevant to multimodal interface design for the field of New Instrument Design and also the wider field of Human Computer Interaction

eNTERFACE ‘08: Project4 Interface Design Audio Feedback Non-Speech Auditory Cues - MAX/MSP Spatialised sound Haptic Feedback PHANTOM

eNTERFACE ‘08: Project4 User Evaluation: Target Finding Task The proposed idea is to implement a target finding task with haptic feedback using the PHANTOM and non-speech audio cues. This is an extension of an existing study by 2 PhD students at McGill University, Rafa Absar and Stephen Sinclair. This study is based on a simulation of ripples where the user has to navigate to a certain target at the centre of the concentric circles.

eNTERFACE ‘08: Project4 Experiment Design: Target Finding Task Each concentric circle will be a mixture of changing pitch and loudness. As the user becomes closer to the target, pitch becomes higher and more intense. For haptic cues, the amplitude and frequency of the ripples increases as the users becomes closer.

eNTERFACE ‘08: Project4 User Testing Using a simple navigation task, investigate perceptual interactions across audio-haptic modalities. audio only, haptics only and finally test both modalities. Methodology for user testing Both qualitative and quantitative evaluations, Qualitative - Thinkaloud Method: subjective reports of satisfaction, ease of use, ease of learning Quantitative - completion times, accuracy, number of errors and how easy it is to recover from them User Group: eNTERFACE Participants

eNTERFACE ‘08: Project4 Proposed Schedule Week 1: Create/Identify multimodal cues/interface to be tested Week 2: Pilot test with group members, refine experimental design/task Week 3: Run Participants (eNTERFACERS from other projects) Week 4: Data Analysis & write-up Combine qualitative and quantitative measures (think-loud protocol, verbal comments, satisfaction, completion time, analysis of the trajectories etc...). Write a first draft of a article to be submitted for publication after the workshop.

eNTERFACE ‘08: Project4 Summary It is intended that this project will highlight usability issues for audio haptic cues by conducting user evaluations of a multimodal interface. Experiments should produce both quantitative and qualitative data concerning issues of integration between audio and haptic modalities for interface design in virtual environments. It is hoped that these results can be published in a peer-reviewed publication at the end of the project.