Factors influencing modality choice in multimodal applications

This paper describes initial results from an evaluation study on the use of different modalities. The application, a web-based media recommender and management system called MediaScout, was installed on two multimodal devices, and on one unimodal device as a control condition. The study aims to investigate whether users make use of multimodality if it is offered and under which circumstances they do so. Moreover, it was studied whether users' stated modality preferences match their actual use of the modalities. The results show that users do not make use of all modalities for all tasks. Modality usage is determined by the task to be performed, as well as the efficiency of the modality for achieving the task goal. Both modality usage and the range of offered modalities seem to influence subjective user ratings.