Designing Across Senses: A Multimodal Approach to Product Design

Today we have the ability to connect speech, touch, haptic, and gestural interfaces into products that engage several human senses at once. This practical book explores examples from current designers and devices to describe how these products blend multiple interface modes together into a cohesive user experience.

Authors Christine Park and John Alderman explain the basic principles behind multimodal interaction and introduce the tools you need to root your design in the ways our senses shape experience. This book also includes guides on process, design, and deliverables to help your team get started.

The book covers several topics within multimodal design, including:

• New Human Factors: learn how human sensory abilities allow us to interact with technology and the physical world
• New Technologies: explore some of the technologies that enable multimodal interactions, products, and capabilities
• Multimodal Products: examine different categories of products and learn how they deliver sensory-rich experiences
• Multimodal Design: learn processes and methodologies for multimodal product design, development, and release

Christine Park has been a design leader and speaker for over fifteen years. She’s worked on a broad range of interfaces modes including touch, gesture, and voice for companies including XBox, Intel, and Panasonic.

John Alderman is a creative planner who helps companies develop and execute strategies for innovative brands, content, and design. He began his career as a writer and editor covering technology, internet, and culture at Mondo 2000, and Wired, and then worked as a creative director at Razorfish and The Barbarian Group. He writes about how technology, design, business, and culture shape each other, and transform how we live. He has previously written two books: Sonic Boom (a New York Times Notable Book) and Core Memory (a Design Observer Book of the Year), and has contributed to Domus, Étapes, Rhizome, The Independent, and The Guardian. He has been interviewed by BBC, NPR, CNN and many others. He likes to travel and play music, sometimes at the same time.