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Smell-O-Message: integration of olfactory notifications into a messaging application to improve users' performance

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conference contribution
posted on 2023-06-09, 14:52 authored by Emanuela Maggioni, Robert Cobden, Dmitrijs DmitrenkoDmitrijs Dmitrenko, Marianna Obrist
Smell is a powerful tool for conveying and recalling information without requiring visual attention. Previous work identified, however, some challenges caused by user's unfamiliarity with this modality and complexity in the scent delivery. We are now able to overcome these challenges, introducing a training approach to familiarize scent-meaning associations (urgency of a message, and sender identity) and using a controllable device for the scent-delivery. Here we re-validate the effectiveness of smell as notification modality and present findings on the performance of smell in conveying information. In a user study composed of two sessions we compared the effectiveness of visual, olfactory, and combined visual-olfactory notifications in a messaging application. We demonstrated that olfactory notifications improve users' confidence and performance in identifying the urgency level of a message, with the same reaction time and disruption levels as for visual notifications. We discuss the design implications and opportunities for future work in the domain of multimodal interactions.

Funding

SenseX - Sensory Experiences for Interactive Technologies; G1589; EUROPEAN UNION; H2020-ERC-2014-STG-638605

OWidgets - Design of a new non-existing layer of information delivery through smell; G2057; EUROPEAN UNION; 737576

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Accepted version

Journal

ICMI '18: Proceedings of the 20th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

Page range

45-54

Event name

20th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction

Event location

Boulder, CO, USA

Event type

conference

Event date

October 16-20th, 2018

Place of publication

New York, NY, United States

ISBN

9781450356923

Department affiliated with

  • Informatics Publications

Research groups affiliated with

  • Creative Technology Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2018-08-30

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2018-11-15

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2018-08-30

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