User walkthrough of multimodal access to multidimensional databases

This paper describes a user walkthrough that was conducted with an experimental multimodal dialogue system to access a multidimensional music database using a simulated mobile device (including a technically challenging four-PHANToM-setup). The main objectives of the user walkthrough were to assess user preferences for certain modalities (speech, graphical and haptic-tactile) to access and present certain types of information, and for certain search strategies when searching and browsing a multidimensional database. In addition, the project aimed at providing concrete recommendations for the experimental setup, multimodal user interface design and evaluation. The results show that recommendations can be formulated both on the use of modalities and search strategies, and on the experimental setup as a whole, including the user interface. In short, it is found that haptically enhanced buttons are preferred for navigating or selecting and speech is preferred for searching the database for an album or artist. A 'direct' search strategy indicating an album, artist or genre is favorable. It can be concluded that participants were able to look beyond the experimental setup and see the potential of the envisioned mobile device and its modalities. Therefore it was possible to formulate recommendations for future multimodal dialogue systems for multidimensional database access. Copyright 2004 ACM