The effect of multimodal feedback presented via a touch screen on the performance of older adults

Many IT devices - such as mobile phones and PDAs - have recently started to incorporate easy-to-use touch screens. There is an associated need for more effective user interfaces for touch screen devices that have a small screen area. One attempt to make such devices more effective and/or easy to use has come through the introduction of multimodal feedback from two or more sensory modalities. Multimodal feedback might provide even larger benefits to older adults who are often unfamiliar with recent developments in electronic devices, and may be suffering from the age-related degeneration of both cognitive and motor processes. Therefore, the beneficial effects associated with the use of multimodal feedback might be expected to be larger for older adults in perceptually and/or cognitively demanding situations. In the present study, we examined the potential benefits associated with the provision of multimodal feedback via a touch screen on older adults' performance in a demanding dual-task situation. We compared unimodal (visual) feedback with various combinations of multimodal (bimodal and trimodal) feedback. We also investigated the subjective difficulty of the task as a function of the type of feedback provided in order to evaluate qualitative usability issues. Overall, the results demonstrate that the presentation of multimodal feedback with auditory signals via a touch screen device results in enhanced performance and subjective benefits for older adults. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.