Multimodal Trivariate Thematic Maps with Auditory and Haptic Display

The purpose of this study is to explore the possibility of multimodal trivariate thematic maps by utilizing auditory and haptic displays. With two different modes of display (color only displays and multimodal displays with color, audio, and haptic), the completion time of tasks and the recall (retention) rate were measured in two separate experiments. In terms of the completion time, with minimal learning experience, participants could accomplish the tasks at the same level of speed in both modes. For the recall rate, multimodal displays have much higher recall rates. It is speculated that the natural quantitative hierarchies in auditory and haptic displays provide an advantage in the use of multimodal displays. These findings confirmed the possibility of using auditory and haptic displays in visually dominant geographic information systems (GIS) for multi-variate thematic maps