Factorial Design in an experiment
Is the starting point for a solution most elegant
It can illustrate an interaction
And draw attention to connection
In a multimodal situation
Where being as human as possible
Is highly probable
To be more than square
But with curves and fractals if you dare
Or better yet, being whole
And discovering what is the soul
Where all actions, thoughts and feelings are countable
Into an algorithm amountable
Leading to technology fenomenal
And even perhaps a little science fictional
So if we break you into your senses
With multimodal inferences
Is auditory only what you hear
With the drum of your inner ear?
But is that really all? Is that where it does begin?
Or do you feel the sounds upon your very own skin?
As the sounds reaching deep into your nerves
Making undulating swerves.
Up your spine to the mind or down to the toes?
Can you feel the blues, pinks and greens in the rhythmic woes?
Therefore, isn’t sound also haptic?
Or is touch only something you do with fingers tactic?
Can you touch someone with the voice?
Or the beat of your heart by choice?
What about a person’s magnetic field?
Are there not figures there to yield?
Flows with the rhythm of the heart, breath, thoughts and feelings.
Round and round, up and down, with emotional dealings.
Can you see it? With electromagnetic vision?
Like the Aurora Borealis falling near the horizon.
And is visual input only with your eyes?
Or can you create pictures with your inner mind?
Where you can see even if you are blind.
Here X marks the spot
Perhaps you can see a photonic dot
The visual centre where imagination meets reality
It is more complex than Latin Square banality.
The Romans are dead, so we should let them rest
Otherwise, we will never reach our best.
Our systems are more than grids of 1s and 0s
But complex combinations of colours and shadows
Now if we get on with this experimental design
And factor in all the possibilities upon the vine
We will be here for infinity plus one
And this experiment will never be done
So we need some limits, a boundary or two
To choose what sphere to look into
And apply factorial design to the task
Knowing what questions to ask
With two or more independent variables
Be sure use clearly formed labels
As the response and feedback you get from each person
Is a haptic, visual and auditory emmersion
Auditory is like music, aimed for the ear
Or to feel for those who do not hear
While haptic is touch, putting the hand in a box
With a surprise inside, perhaps even it ticks and tocks
Visual is a photo or a silent movie
Something from the 1920s could be rather groovey
You can even blend them in a mix
With auditory and haptics
Follow through a maze blindfolded
While sounds lead in the direction headed
Or even auditory and visual
In short, a movie — quite viseral
Haptic and visual put together
Like a boardgame to play indoors in cold weather
And finally, make use of all three
Haptic, visual and auditory
With a virtual reality, improv or roleplay
Or throw murder mystery partae!
A series of activities to engage the senses
True and genuinely, without pretenses
But back to statistical analyses
And to avoid any significant fallacies
Multimodality needs to be divided
For instance, into those three senseful factors provided
But just be aware of the interaction effect
When two variables have a strong intersect
Having a direct influence over other variables as a result
Now some more considerations to add injury to insult
Keep in mind that repetition and keen interest
Can develop the learning effect increasing academic intellect
And if the exercises are too tedious and time consuming
They can fatigue a person, quite glooming
So that is the beginning of factorial experimental design
But to be an expert you will have to resign
To the fact that there are infinite variables to count
As many as the stars on a clear night to surmount
So with a sound objective in mind
And the power of limits to bind
Factor in who you are and where you want to put the bar
So you know which direction to point and more importantly: how far
