Multimodal Usability, 2010
Human–Computer Interaction Series

This preface tells the story of how Multimodal Usability responds to a special challenge. Chapter 1 describes the goals and structure of this book. The idea of describing how to make multimodal computer systems usable arose in the European Network of Excellence SIMILAR ? ?Taskforce for cre- ing human-machine interfaces SIMILAR to human-human communication?, 2003? 2007, www. similar. cc. SIMILAR brought together people from multimodal signal processing and usability with the aim of creating enabling technologies for new kinds of multimodal systems and demonstrating results in research prototypes. Most of our colleagues in the network were, in fact, busy extracting features and guring out how to demonstrate progress in working interactive systems, while claiming not to have too much of a notion of usability in system development and evaluation. It was proposed that the authors support the usability of the many multimodal pro- types underway by researching and presenting a methodology for building usable multimodal systems. We accepted the challenge, rst and foremost, no doubt, because the formidable team spirit in SIMILAR could make people accept outrageous things. Second, h- ing worked for nearly two decades on making multimodal systems usable, we were curious ? curious at the opportunity to try to understand what happens to traditional usability work, that is, work in human?computer interaction centred around tra- tional graphical user interfaces (GUIs), when systems become as multimodal and as advanced in other ways as those we build in research today.

1. Structure, Usability, Readership 1.1 Goals 1.2 How to work on Usability 1.3 Structure and Scope of this book 1.4 What is Usability 1.5 Usability Matters - But how much? 1.6 Reader's Guide 1.7 Key points 2. Intermezzo 1 Three Multimodal Cases 2.1 Contents and Origins 2.2 What's Next? 3. Creating a Model of Use 3.1 AMITUDE - A model of system use 3.2 Application Type 3.3 Users and people 3.4 Tasks and other activities, Domain 3.5 Use Environment 3.6 Interaction 3.7 Key points 4. Modalities and Devices 4.1 What is a Multimodal system? 4.2 Which modalities exist? 4.3 Practical use of modalities 4.4 Multimodal representation 4.5 Input/Output devices 5. Intermezzo 2 Status on Cases and Next Steps 5.1 Case AMITUDE Models of Use 5.2 Case Usability Goals, Requirements and Evaluation Criteria 5.3 Towards a Broader Perspective on Usability Work 6. Common Approaches, Methods, Planning 6.1 Common Usability Approaches 6.2 Methods for Usability 6.3 Writing a usability workplan 6.4 Writinga usability method plan 6.5 Key points 7. Intermezzo 3 Case Usability Workplan, Design 7.1 Case Usability Workplans 7.2 Case Design 8. Question-Answering 8.1 About Interviews 8.2 About questionnaires 8.3 User Survey 8.4 Customer Interviews and Questionnaires 8.5 Expert interviews and questionnaires 8.6 Screening interviews and questionnaires 8.7 Pre-test interviews and questionnaires 8.8 Post-test interviews and questionnaires 9. Meetings with Discussion 9.1 Focus group meetings 9.2 Stakeholder meetings 9.3 Workshops and other meetings with user representatives 10. Observation of Users 10.1 Macro-Behavioural field methods 10.2 Micro-Behavioural field observation 10.3 Category sorting 10.4 Observation of users in real time 10.5 Human data collection in the lab 11. Imagination 11.1 Use cases and scenarios 11.2 Personas 11.3 Cognitive walkthrough 11.4 Guideline-based usability development and evaluation 11.5 Usability standards 12. Interaction with the System 12.1 Mock-up 12.2 Wizard of Oz