Design of multimodal systems

Recently I found an interesting journal article titled Human Factors (HF): Multimodal interaction, communication and navigation guidelines. It has defined a set of metaprinciples and design principles for multimodal systems. For elaboration and examples of these see page 17-21 in the document.

Metaprinciples

1. Use multimodal presentation of information to allow users with different preferences and abilities to interpret data in their preferred way.
2. Use multimodal interpretation to allow users to interact with a system following their individual preferences and suited to their special needs.

Design principles

1. The range of available modalities should be offered in the different modalities.
2. It should be possible to choose different presentations modalities using any of the available interaction modalities.
3. Individual modalities should be activated optionally.
4. Individual modalities should be scalable by the user.
5. Completeness of functionality/controls should be ensured in all available modalities.
6. Modalities should only be switched at logically sensible situations in the dialogue.
7. The user-specific modality setting should persist.
8. Adequate prompts should be offered in the chosen modality.
9. The same information should be expressed in different modalities.
10. The same style should be expressed in different modalities.
11. Dialogues should be aesthetically consistent in each and every modality.
12. Multimodality should not be stigmatizing.

 

Security and Usability

Like the graph under visualizes it is an issue that as a system gets more secure, it also becomes less usable.(Microsoft) However, can we with user centered design make this graph less steep?

 

Eye tracking on mobile devices

The research project (e-Me) that I am connected to at the Norwegian Computing Center have recently gotten the Tobii X60/X120 Mobile Device Testing Solution which enables you to do eye tracking on mobile devices. Because of my connection to e-Me I will get an introduction to the system and will have the opportunity to use it in my master, which I’m really excited about!

 

Accessible mobile interfaces

Funka have designed and published a set of guidelines for developing of accessible mobile interfaces (in Swedish).

Funkas methodology was developed in close collaboration with the disability movement and all that we recommend is tested in reality. Our business is based on international guidelines for accessibility, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0). Funkas long experience of the availability of work and testing with users with different needs and conditions, with and without aids, shows that WCAG 2.0 is not enough. We have therefore developed the test criteria for points that are complementary to international regulations and the public sector through the EU decision to follow.

This is very relevant to my thesis even though Feide, which is an internal system for students and people in the educational sector, not is affected by the EU regulations, it is a technology used by more and more people and should ideally be accessible to everyone.

 

An interview is…

«An interview is a conversation with a purpose»

– Kahn & Channel

 

Pilot interview

Today I did a pilot interview with one of the participants from the probe study. Went well, but I will reformulate and add some questions before I conduct the rest of the interviews.

All of the interviewees will be people that agreed to be contacted after the joining the probe study. So they already know what the project is about, however before the interview they have to sign a form describing among other things the project, the purpose of the interview, that the data will be anonymised and that they agree to the terms.

The interviews are still focusing on peoples understanding of security and how that affect their behavior in connection to authentication. I have separated the interview into two parts, starting with some initial questions about the interviewee, then some questions about their mobile and computer habits. The second part of the interview will be used to discuss some of the results from the probes. To facilitate the discussion I have printed out some graphs, some examples of different authentication methods and some of the context pictures that I received from the probes.

 

Data gathering: probes – results 1

I have handed in all of the probes that I made, and tried to analyze the result. I have been looking for patterns and results that stand out and seen if some of the results can help me answer the research question. (This is post describes only some of the results).

As mentioned in my las blog post the study included ten students from the department of informatics. The only requirement I had was that they owned a smart phone, some had an iPhone and some had an Android. This was a qualitative research with few participant, so the results cannot be used to generalize, but does give an impression of the trends among students.

 

Data gathering: probes

One of the methods I am using to gather data is cultural probes. Probes are supposed to work as an instrument to provoke a response from the participants.

Having said that, ‘cultural probe’ is actually a very good description of what these things are about. If you think about a probe as something you send off into the unknown — typically I use the analogy of a space probe like Voyager — it’s something that goes somewhere where we can’t go ourselves and transmits back data. So ‘probe’ is a very appropriate word. (Source)

 

Mobile Media Design

Print screen of the prototype

This semester I’ve been taking a course called mobile media design at the institute of media and communication. As the course description says the goal was to be trained in exploring the possibilities for mobile media design, while gaining a basic knowledge about the main obstacles and how to overcome them, through a practical, project-based approach in which we would develop our own prototype of a mobile web application.

 

Universal Design or Multimodal User Interface?

E.g. Multimodal User Interface (biometrics) Source: http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTxKdbyRiHlgAWHTgt69iefF3Miq0kcLGKZ1DR-fhbe-ijl5oKS3EmR87_2

There are several ways of making sure that people with disabilities are included and can use a product. Two approaches are Universal Design (UD) and multimodale user interafaces.

Universal Design aims to create products that are usable to as many users as possible without the need for addoption or specialized design (CUD, 1997).

A flexible multimodal user interface can meet different users needs, abilities, situations, preferences and devices by making it possible for users to adjust the product settings based on their needs (Fuglerud 2009; Helman 2008).