Evaluating the social acceptability of multimodal mobile interactions

Multimodal mobile interfaces require users to adopt new and possibly strange behaviors in public places. It is important to design these interfaces to account for the social restrictions of public settings. However, past research in multimodal interaction has primarily focused on issues of sensing and recognition rather than the investigation of user opinions and social factors that influence the acceptance of multimodal interfaces. This research examines the factors affecting social acceptability of multimodal interactions, beginning with gesture-based interfaces. This work includes a survey and an on-the-street user study that examine how users determined which gestures were acceptable. Future work seeks to examine other modalities, in order to create guidelines for socially acceptable designs and a methodology for investigating social acceptability.