Multimodal

There have been debates and tantrums over screen time over the past few weeks. Cloistered together, the family stew can thicken over time. Sometimes, a few minutes of respite are great to focus on a call or get some work done. Then a few hours pass by and you wonder why your kids have been so quiet. Oh, they’re still watching…

Then, it’s the job of getting them off the screen, like unsticking a barnacle from a ship’s hull. The pain of being disconnected from their focus washes over them.

However, there are a few interactions with the screen that have been really positive. One was an activity that involved reading through a book on a computer, printing out the pages, then coloring them. This occupied hours of running back and forth, finding new colors, reading the words on the coloring book back, assembling them into books.

Multimodal interactions are an order of magnitude more engaging. In fact, maybe each mode adds another order of magnitude. Drawing, smelling, tasting, looking, touching — for Skill makers and app developers, the more, the better.