Information presentation for a wearable messenger device

Abstract

In this paper we address the question of how message presentation can be optimized given the constraints of a wearable messenger device. The device delivers short messages and is equipped with an earplug for speech output and a small screen. Due to hardware and software limitations, text can be presented on the screen in chunks, but the pacing of the chunks cannot be fully synchronized with the speech. An experiment was conducted to assess the effect of five different presentation modes: speech only, text chunks only, speech + text chunks, full text at once, speech + full text at once. The latter two conditions were included as control conditions. Subjects reported main concepts in each message right after presentation. It was found that the "speech + full message at once" condition did give better performance than the "speech only" condition but not better than the "full text message at once" condition; the "speech + text chunks" condition gave a (nonsignificant better performance than the "speech only" and "text chunks only" conditions. The results are interpreted as evidence that, even if full synchronization of the speech and text cannot be achieved, combined presentation of speech and text is superior than either alone. The findings are discussed in relation to cross-modal compensation effects.