Verbal assistance to visual search in complex visualizations
Suzanne Kieffer, Noëlle Carbonell · 2003
We present an exploratory experiment of the possible contribution of multimodal messages to facilitating visual search in complex scenes (e.g., visualizations of very large data sets). The main objective is to evaluate the actual contribution of verbal information to improving the efficiency (i.e., accuracy and speed) of the detection and selection (using the mouse) of visual targets. The evaluation focuses on the performances and subjective satisfaction of future users in three situations where the main free variable is the target's preliminary presentation: (i) display of the isolated target, (ii) verbal designation + information on its location in the scene, and (iii) multimodal (visual + oral) presentation. Multimodal target presentations improved subjects' performances significantly; they also received the highest subjective ratings.