Towards Interactive Multisensory Data Representations

Despite the availability of a broad range of newly developed multisensory displays and interaction techniques, multisensory interactive data representations are still not widely used. We argue that for complex information analysis multisensory data representations and multimodal interactivity are essential. By leveraging the benefits of the individual sensory modalities multisensory representations and interaction techniques can make the representation and handling of complex data more intuitive and transparent. This can make complex data analysis accessible to a wider audience, also including non-experts. However, there is currently a lack of agreed guidelines for their integrated design, as well as little empirical research in this area. We argue that there is an urgent need for further systematic research into human multisensory information processing to provide rules that enable the design and construction of representations and interfaces that achieve optimal synergistic cooperation across sensory modalities.