Feasibility and Utility of Multimodal Micro Ecological Momentary Assessment on a Smartwatch

μEMAs allow participants to answer a short survey quickly with a tap on a smartwatch screen or a brief speech input. The short interaction time and low cognitive burden enable researchers to collect self-reports at high frequency (once every 5-15 minutes) while maintaining participant engagement. Systems with single input modality, however, may carry different contextual biases that could affect compliance. We combined two input modalities to create a multimodal-μEMA system, allowing participants to choose between speech or touch input to self-report. To investigate system usability, we conducted a seven-day field study where we asked 20 participants to label their posture and/or physical activity once every five minutes throughout their waking day. Despite the intense prompting interval, participants responded to 72.4% of the prompts. We found participants gravitated towards different modalities based on personal preferences and contextual states, highlighting the need to consider these factors when designing context-aware multimodal μEMA systems.