Crease, Murray (2001) a Toolkit of Resource-Sensitive Multimodal Widgets. Phd Thesis Copyright
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Crease, Murray (2001) A toolkit of resource-sensitive multimodal widgets. PhD thesis http://theses.gla.ac.uk/6645/ Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Glasgow Theses Service http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] UNIVERSITY 0/ GLASGOW A Toolkit Of Resource-Sensitive, Multimodal Widgets Murray Crease Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2001 Abstract This thesis describes an architecture for a toolkit of user interface components which allows the presentation of the widgets to use multiple output modalities - typically, audio and visual. Previously there was nl) toolkit of widgets which would use the most appropriate presentational resources according to their availability and suitability. Typically the use of different forms of presentation was limited to graphical feedback with the addition of other forms of presentation, such as sound, being added in an ad hoc fashion with only limited scope for managing the use of the different resources. A review of existing auditory interfaces provided some requirements that the toolkit would need to fulfil for it to be effective. In addition, it was found that a strand of research in this area required further investigation to ensure that a full set of requirements was captured. It was found that no formal evaluation of audio being used to provide background information had been undertaken. A sonically-enhanced progress indicator was designed and evaluated showing that audio feedback could be used as a replacement for visual feedback rather than simply as an enhancement. The experiment also completed the requirements capture for the design of the toolkit of multimodal widgets. A review of existing user interface architectures and systems, with particular attention paid to the way they manage multiple output modalities presented some design guidelines for the architecture of the toolkIt. Building on these guidelines a design for the toolkit which fulfils all the previously captured requirements is presented. An implementation of this design is given, with an evaluation of the implementation showing that it fulfils all the requirements of the design. Contents Chapter 1 : Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Motivation ............................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1.1 Scenario 1: Designing Feedback .................................................................................................... 1 1.1.2 The Problem: Assumptions About What Information is Important... .............................................. 2 1.1.3 Scenario 2: The Use of Such a User Interface ................................................................................... 3 1.1.4 Discussion of Scenario 2 ....... .... ........ ........... ................. ............................................... ..... .4 1.2 Thesis Aims ............................................................................................................................................ 7 1.3 Thesis Structure ............................................................................................................ ..... .... .... ... 8 Chapter 2 : Thesis Concepts ............................................................................................................................. 10 2.1 Widget Toolkit ....................................................................................................................................... 10 2.1.1 Widgets ............................................................................................................................................ 10 2.1.2 Toolkit ............................................................................................................................................. 11 2.2 Multimodal ............................................................................................................................................. 11 2.2.1 Modality .......................................................................................................................................... 11 2.3 Resource-Sensitive ................................................................................................................................. 12 2.3.1 Presentation Resources ................................................................................................................... 12 2.3.2 Resource Availability ...................................................................................................................... 12 2.3.3 Resource Suitability ........................................................................................................................ 12 2.3.4 Resource-Sensitive versus Adaptive ............................................................................................... 13 2.4 Conclusions ............................................................................................................................................ 14 Chapter 3 : Audio Human-Computer Interfaces ............................................................................................... 15 3.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 15 3.2 The Use of Sound at the Human-Computer Interface ............................................................................ 15 3.2.1 Why Use Sound? ........................................................................................................................... , .16 3.2.2 Some Problems With Sound ............................................................................................................ 17 3.3 Different Forms of Sound ....................................................................................................................... 17 3.3.1 Speech ............................................................................................................................................ 18 3.3.2 Auditory Icons ................................................................................................................................ 19 3.3.3 Earcons ........................................................................................................................................... 23 3.3.4 Summary ...................................................................................... ........................ .... ....... ....... 25 3.4 Examples of Sound at the Human-Computer Interface ............................................................. ..... 26 3.4.1 Sonic Enhancement of Widgets With Earcons ................................................................................ 26 3.4.2 Audio Environments ........................................................................................................................ 39 3.5 Guidelines and Requirements ............................................................................................................ .42 II 3.5.1 Guidelines for the Use of Sound ............................................................................................... .42 3.5.2 Toolkit Requirements ............................................................................................. ...... .43 3.6 Conclusions ........................................................................................................................................... 43 Chapter 4: A Comparison of User Interface Architectures and Their Support of Multirnodallty .......45 4.1 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... .45 4.2 User Interface Architectures .................................................................................................................. .46 4.2.1 Seeheim Model .............................................................................................................................. .46 4.2.2 The Arch Model ..................................................................................................................... .47 4.2.3 Agent-Based Models ..................................................................................................................... .49 4.3 User Interface Systems ..................................................................................................... ......... 52 4.4 Architectures That Support Multimodal Interfaces ............................................................................. 61 4.5 Summary ................................................................................................................................................ 70 Chapter 5 : Design and Evaluation of an Auditory Progress Indicator ............................................................