Did you notice?: neuronal processing of multimodal mobile phone feedback

To acknowledge information received by a mobile device, a number of feedback modalities are available for which human information processing is still not completely understood. This paper focuses on how different feedback modalities are perceived by users introducing a test method that is new in this field of research. The evaluation is done via standard self-assessment and by analyzing brain activity [electroencephalogram (EEG)]. We conducted an experiment with unimodal and multi-modal feedback combinations, and compared behavioral user data to EEG data. We could show that EEG is a feasible method for quantifying conscious processing of feedback in different modalities as it correlates highly with subjective ratings. EEG can thus be considered an additional tool for assessing the effectiveness of feedback, revealing conscious and potential non-conscious information processing.