In this paper we describe the results of experimental evaluation of user performance in a pursuit-tracking task with multimodal feedback. Our experimental results indicate that audio can significantly improve the accuracy of pursuit tracking. Experiments with 19 participants have shown that addition of acoustic modalities reduces the error during pursuit tracking for up to 19%. | Yugoslav Journal of Operations Research 14 (2004), Number 1, 99-115 EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATION OF USER PERFORMANCE IN A PURSUIT TRACKING TASK WITH MULTIMODAL FEEDBACK Željko OBRENOVIĆ Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Belgrade Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro obren@ Received: October 2003 / Accepted: January 2004 Abstract: In this paper we describe the results of experimental evaluation of user performance in a pursuit-tracking task with multimodal feedback. Our experimental results indicate that audio can significantly improve the accuracy of pursuit tracking. Experiments with 19 participants have shown that addition of acoustic modalities reduces the error during pursuit tracking for up to 19%. Moreover, experiments indicated the existence of perceptual boundaries of multimodal HCI for different scene complexity and target speeds. We have also shown that the most appealing paradigms are not the most effective ones, which necessitates a careful quantitative analysis of proposed multimodal HCI paradigms. Keywords: Multimodal user interfaces, sonification, experimental evaluation, pursuit tracking, human factors. 1. INTRODUCTION Extending user interfaces by using the audio channel is nowadays becoming commonplace. Many applications use different sound effects to extend the perceptual bandwidth of human-computer interaction. One of the most important advantages of sonification is that a computer generated sonic scene leaves the visual field unimpaired, unobstructed, and ready for investigation of the environment for surprises [14, 28]. Sonification can significantly improve the quality of human computer interaction particularly in case of virtual/augmented reality systems. This is very important in a range of the mission critical applications, such as surgical navigation, aircraft navigation and safety, spacecraft docking, night vision mission navigation, and flight navigation and orientation [20, 25]. However, the use of sound modalities is
