UAIS. Article dans revue scientifique avec comité de lecture. The original publication is available at www.springerlink.comInternational audienceThis paper presents novel recommendations for the design of usable multimodal command or query languages. These recommendations have been inferred from the results of three empirical studies focused on the use of spontaneous speech (first study) and the synergic use of spontaneous versus controlled speech and gestures (second and third studies) for interacting with current application software. In particular, we propose a method for designing multimodal languages which can be considered as appropriate substitutes for direct manipulation, in all contexts precluding the use of mouse and keyboard, and for all standard categories of users, especially the general public. || Nous présentons de nouvelles recommandations pour la conception de langages d'interaction multimodaux robustes, faciles à apprendre et à utiliser. Ces recommandations ont été établies à partir des résultats de trois études empiriques sur l'usage spontan