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Modality is the message: interactivity effects on perception and engagement

Published: 10 April 2010 Publication History

Abstract

New media interfaces offer a wide variety of modalities for interacting with systems. While typing and clicking remain the staple of most interfaces, several other modalities have emerged in recent years, enabling users to perform a range of other actions, such as dragging, sliding, zooming-in/out, mousing-over and flipping through a revolving carousel of images (as in cover flow). While each modality offers a unique way of interacting with information, it is not clear whether it brings unique psychological advantages. Does a drag engender greater user engagement? Is the mouse-over likely to enhance user's perceptual bandwidth? A scientific assessment of such effects is impossible with existing interfaces given the confounded nature of modality combinations and information provided by them. Therefore, we designed six Web interface prototypes with identical content, differing only in modality, for experimentally isolating the effects of each, using a between-subjects design. Ongoing data collection involves both physiological and psychological measures of perceptual bandwidth and engagement.

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      cover image ACM Conferences
      CHI EA '10: CHI '10 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
      April 2010
      2219 pages
      ISBN:9781605589305
      DOI:10.1145/1753846

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      Published: 10 April 2010

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      Author Tags

      1. interactivity
      2. modality
      3. perceptual bandwidth
      4. user engagement
      5. web interfaces

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      • (2022)News Informatics: Engaging Individuals with Data-Rich News Content through Interactivity in Source, Medium, and MessageProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3502207(1-17)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
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      • (2015)Toward a Theory of Interactive Media Effects (TIME)The Handbook of the Psychology of Communication Technology10.1002/9781118426456.ch3(47-86)Online publication date: 23-Jan-2015
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