Glossary

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Audio-tactile interface(also: Audio-tactile system, Talking tactile)

An interactive system that combines physical tactile surfaces with electronic audio feedback, providing spoken labels, descriptions, or sonified data when the user touches specific areas of a tactile graphic or map. Audio-tactile interfaces reduce the cognitive load of tactile…

Cross-Modal Perception(also: Multisensory perception, Cross-modal integration)

The neural and perceptual integration of information arriving through two or more sensory channels — such as vision, hearing, touch, and proprioception — into a coherent experience of the world. Cross-modal perception explains phenomena such as the McGurk effect,…

Cross-modal Congruency

The temporal, spatial, and semantic alignment of sensory cues during an interaction — for example, a visual event and its accompanying sound occurring at the same moment and in the same location, with matching emotional tone. Congruency differs from correspondence:…

Embodied Conversational Agent(also: ECA, Virtual Agent, Animated Agent)

A computer-generated animated character designed to interact with human users using multiple simultaneous communication channels — typically speech, eye gaze, facial expression, head and body posture, and hand gestures. ECAs are used in tutoring systems, customer-service agents,…

Haptic Design(also: Vibrotactile Design, Haptic Authoring)

The practice of authoring haptic feedback - typically vibrations, forces, or temperature cues - so that it conveys intended meaning, emotion, or synchronicity with other media. Haptic design involves choosing signal parameters such as amplitude, frequency, timing, and spatial…

Information Perceptualization(also: Perceptualization)

Information perceptualization is the mapping of abstract data or information onto perceptual properties across multiple sensory modalities — vision, hearing, touch, and occasionally taste or smell — in a coordinated, multimodal display. It generalises the more familiar notion of…

Intermedia(also: Intermedia Representation)

Intermedia refers to a framework for information representation that supports diverse, adaptable, and flexible presentation modes, allowing the same content to be accessed through multiple alternative forms suited to individual needs and capabilities. Unlike multimedia (which…

Modality(also: Interaction Modality, Interface Modality)

The sensory channel or communication method through which a user interacts with a computer system, such as visual (graphical displays), auditory (speech or non-speech audio), tactile (braille, haptic feedback), or textual (command-line) output, and keyboard, mouse, voice,…

Multimodal Cueing

Multimodal cueing is the simultaneous or selectable use of two or more sensory channels - typically visual, auditory, and somatosensory (vibrotactile) - to guide motor behaviour during rehabilitation or assistive interaction. The rationale is that different modalities engage…

Multimodal Natural Language Generation(also: Multimodal NLG)

Natural language generation systems that produce output coordinated across more than one modality — typically combinations of text or speech with graphics, maps, animation, gesture, or tactile output. Multimodal NLG systems decompose their output into several "channels" that are…

Multisensory Integration

The neural and perceptual process by which the brain combines information from different sensory modalities — sight, hearing, touch, proprioception — into a unified percept. Integration relies on temporal and spatial binding windows that widen with age: older adults tolerate…

Multisensory Interaction(also: Multisensory HCI)

Multisensory interaction is an HCI research area concerned with designing and studying systems that engage two or more human senses - sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste, proprioception - simultaneously or in combination. It differs from multimodal interaction (which typically…

Olfactory Display(also: Olfactory Interface, Olfactory Feedback, Smell Display)

An olfactory display is a hardware system that delivers controlled scent stimuli to a user, typically as part of a virtual reality, augmented reality, or multisensory interaction system. Designs range from desk-mounted vapour generators to head-mounted, hand-held, and neck-worn…

Put That There(also: Put-That-There)

A pioneering multimodal interactive system built at MIT's Architecture Machine Group (1979-1980), reported by Bolt (1980) and further developed by Schmandt and Hulteen (1982). Users seated in a 'media room' could manipulate a graphical database — such as a Caribbean shipping map…

Redundant Input(also: Redundant Input Channels, Multimodal Redundancy)

A design approach in which a user interface accepts the same command through more than one input channel — for example, voice and gesture, keyboard and pointer, or speech and switch — so that users can choose whichever modality suits their current abilities, context, or…

Semantic Redundancy(also: Redundant Multimodal Input)

A design strategy in multimodal interfaces where the same command or message is conveyed simultaneously through multiple input channels, each independently signalling the user's intent. For example, a user might perform a head nod and a hand gesture at the same time, both…

Vibro-Audio(also: Vibrotactile Audio, Vibro-Tactile)

Vibro-audio is a multimodal interaction technique that combines vibration feedback from a device's built-in motor with auditory cues to convey information non-visually. On touchscreen devices, vibro-audio enables users to explore graphical content through touch — the device…

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