MULTIMODAL MESSAGES - THE PEN AND VOICE OPPORTUNITY

Analyses of the costs and benefits of asynchronous communication, and the complementary properties of writing and speech, are used to predic t that messages containing both writing and speech will be more commun icative than either medium alone. Two experimental studies of asynchro nous messaging are presented. Both experiments examine the use of pen- and-voice messages, that is voice messages attached to 'scribbled', i. e., uninterpreted text. The control conditions were voice messages alo ne, equivalent to an answerphone, and scribbled messages alone, equiva lent to a fax. In Experiment 1 the visual component of the pen-and-voi ce messages was static, in Experiment 2 users could record short 'movi es' including speech and pen movements over a document surface, Users showed a significant preference for the pen-and-voice messages in both experiments. In Experiment 2 half the number of pen-and-voice message s were required to achieve the same task performance as in the control conditions. It is concluded that dynamic pen-and-voice messages have considerable potential advantages over current single medium asynchron ous communication facilities such as fax, answerphone, voicemail and e -mail.