Multimodal interaction and proactive computing

One important issue for proactive computing is how users control and interact with the systems they will carry and have access to when they are out in the field. One solution is to use multimodal interaction (interaction using different combinations of sensory modalities) to allow people to interact in a range of different ways. This paper discusses gestural interaction as an alterna-tive for input. This is advantageous as it does not require users to look at a dis-play. For output non-speech audio and tactile displays are presented as alterna-tives to visual displays. The advantages with these types of displays are that they can be unobtrusive and do not require a user’s visual attention. The combi-nation of these underutilised senses has much potential to create effective inter-faces for proactive systems