Multimodal geographic information systems: Adding haptic and auditory display

The goal of this study was to discover the possibility of adding haptic and auditory displays to traditional visual geographic information systems. With the intrinsic hierarchical properties in both haptic and auditory displays, it is reasonable to utilize them in multimodal GIS (Geographic Information Systems). However, user performance and user satisfaction vary depending on modes, classification, type of tasks, and existence of legend. The differences are also depending on users' musical background, gaming and haptic; device experience, and attitude to geography.; In addition to three pretests, the main experiment was conducted with 51 participants to explore the difference in user performance (task completion time and accuracy) and user satisfaction with a multimodal GIS, which was implemented with haptic display (by different vibration), auditory display (by different volumes), and combined display. The experiment consisted of a series of 36 tasks in which the participants were asked to identify the highest or the middle valued state among 9 U.S. states on maps. The experiment was conducted in a Within-Subject setting.; The results showed that haptic displays produce faster and more accurate performance than auditory displays and combined displays. Specifically, for more complex tasks (more classes, without legend, identifying the middle values), the haptic display showed faster and more accurate performance than others, while for simpler tasks (fewer classes, with legend, identifying the highest value), there is little difference among modes.; In terms of user satisfaction, the participants preferred the combined display even though they performed best with the haptic display. The contradiction between user performance and user satisfaction was speculated as participants' beliefs that multimedia is always better than a single media.; The result also showed that musical background of users affected the performance and satisfaction of the tasks with auditory displays, and gaming and haptic device experience affected the performance and satisfaction of tasks with haptic displays. Those who had a strong musical background performed better and felt more satisfaction with the auditory display than other participants. Those who played video games frequently and used haptic devices for gaming performed better and felt more satisfaction with the haptic display.