Auditory Interfaces

Is the visual interface enough? That is a very important question, considering the overwhelming focus on visual interfaces, in the user interface community.

While graphical user interfaces were a giant leap for the usability of computers, and provide unprecedented control for the users, they may also lack in some areas. The usability of a visual interface is tightly connected to the extent the user is able to focus and concentrate, on each interesting piece. Maintaining focus may be hard or physically impossible (e.g when turning away from the interface), and the amount of information may be overwhelming. In the BreakBits project, we suggest a non-visual solution to that problem. An auditory interface.

It is actually quite common that today's computers use sound, and even short pieces of music, to tell the user something. The computer may beep in different ways, alerting the user of errors and events, and some even play a little tune at startup.

While these beeps and sounds clearly (are meant to) convey information, they often have no defined meaning, and are often just there to tell the user that something's wrong. Too late...

The research on auditory displays and the use of sound and music in computer user interfaces is not att all new, with several notable projects presented, or in progress. Perhaps the most well respected and important of those dealing with event driven auditory interfaces are Earcons and Auditory Icons.

Earcons
First presented by Meera M. Blattner, at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and later thoroughly reseached by Stephen Brewster et. al. , at the University of Glasgow, Earcons were defined as "non-verbal audio messages that are used in the computer/user interface to provide information to the user about some computer object, operation or interaction".

Earcons strives to enhance the widgets (buttons, windows etc.) in graphical user interfaces, by giving sonic clues.

Auditory Icons
The auditory icons, as described by William Gaver, is similar to Brewster's earcons in that it maps event and objects to specific sounds. However, unlike the Earcons, Gaver's auditory icons are constructed using natural sounds, rather than abstract, electronic sounds.


Both these approaches have been thoroughly tested on users, with very convincing outcomes.

Musical Guidance >>