TABLE OF CONTENTS Even though few commercial multimodal applications are available, multimodal-ity has been explored in a variety of different areas and formats, including information kiosks, mobile applications, and ultramobile applications based on digital-paper technology. Multimodal interfaces have also been used to promote accessibility. This section examines some representative examples of interfaces in each of these areas and form factors.
Kiosks providing a variety of services, such as tourist and museum information, banking, airport checking, and automated check-out in retail stores, are becoming more prevalent. The majority of these devices use touch and keypad as data entry mechanisms, producing responses via graphical displays and sometimes speech and audio. Given the requirements for robustness and space constraints, keyboards and mice are not usually available (Johnston & Bangalore, 2004). Multi-modal interfaces provide additional means of interaction that do not require keyboard or mice as well, and may therefore provide an ideal interface option for kiosks. In this section, some representative examples are presented.
MATCHKiosk (Johnston & Bangalore, 2004) is a multimodal interactive city guide for New York City and Washington, DC, providing restaurant and subway/metro information. The kiosk implementationis based onthe mobile MATCH multimodal system (Johnston et al., 2002).
This interactive guide allows users to interact via speech, pen, and touch. Responses are also multimodal, presenting synchronized synthetic speech, a lifelike virtual agent, and dynamically generated graphics (Figure 12.7). The system helps users find restaurants based on location, price, and type of food served. A...
