The information-theoretic analysis of unimodal interfaces and their multimodal counterparts.

ABSTRACTThat multimodal interfaces have benefits over unimodal ones has often been asserted. Several such benefits have been described informally, but, to date, few have actually been formalized or quantified. In this paper, the hypothesized benefits of semantically redundant multimodal input actions are described formally and are quantified using the formalisms provided by Information Theory. A reinterpretation of Keates and Robinson's empirical data (1998) shows that their criticism of multimodal interfaces was, in part, unfounded.