An Initial Study in Using Audio-visual Stimuli in E-commerce

This paper investigates the role of multi-modal metaphors for e-commerce applications. More specifically, the use of textual representations (including tabular representations and tables), graphical representations (including dynamically formed graphs) in the presence and absence of speech are investigated. The paper describes the initial study performed prior to the development of an experimental platform that was used to investigate these issues. In this study, 40 users were used to obtain an overall understanding of the approach taken and to determine the viability of the approach prior to further experiments. The results indicated that the approach of dynamically created graphs in the presence and absence of speech was usable and enable the development of the experimental platform for further experiments. Key-Words: Graphs, Speech-base graphs, E-Commerce, Interface design, Multi-modal, E-shopping, Internetbased software design.