User Choices for Modalities of Instructional Information

This paper presents the results of a multi-disciplinary study into the use of different modalities (text, graphics, audio) when presenting instructional information to four user groups (English as a foreign language, Poor readers, Older people and Fluent readers). As part of these studies 128 participants from the groups performed two procedural tasks where they were allowed to pick the modality, or modality combinations, used to present information. This paper examines the choices of the fours groups, and how those choices were affected by factors such as whether animations were provided and whether the task involved onscreen actions on a virtual object or actions applied to a physical object. The results showed that for procedural tasks the choice of audio varied from 40% to 80% across the user groups, and there was significantly more use of audio when actions were performed on a computer screen as opposed to a separate object. These findings are related to the design of maintenance instructions and online help. These findings emphasize the importance of recognizing diversity among users and providing them with choices about the presentation of multimedia instructions.