What are Multimodal user interfaces?
Traditional Web browsers present a visual rendering of Web pages written in HTML, and allow you to interact through the keyboard and a pointing device such as a mouse, roller ball, touch pad or stylus. Voice user interfaces, by contrast, present information using a combination of synthetic speech and pre-recorded audio, and allow you to interact via spoken commands or phrases. You may also be able to use touch tone (DTMF) keypads. Multimodal user interfaces support multiple modes of interaction: • Input modes: speech, keypads, pointing devices, and electronic ink • Output modes: speech, audio, plain text and displays Electronic ink is the term for information that describes the motion of a stylus in terms of position, velocity and pressure. It can be used for handwriting and gesture recognition. Here are just a few ideas for ways to exploit multimodal user interfaces: • Presenting complementary information on different output modes: When using a cellphone to ask a voice portal for info
