Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!swrinde!mips!cs.uoregon.edu!ogicse!milton!raven.alaska.edu!casbah.acns.nwu.edu!ils.nwu.edu!Pete
From: Pete Welter
Newsgroups: comp.human-factors
Subject: Re: Audio feedback from GUI's
Message-ID: <2090@anaxagoras.ils.nwu.edu>
Date: 13 Jun 91 14:48:34 GMT
References: <1991Jun12.171211.2716@cs.umn.edu> <31228@hydra.gatech.EDU> <1991Jun12.202741.16629@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <1991Jun12.215523.7379@cs.umn.edu> <1991Jun13.003210.23083@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Sender: news@ils.nwu.edu
Distribution: na
Organization: Institute for the Learning Sciences
Lines: 46

In article <1991Jun13.003210.23083@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> lnk10562@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu
(Louis Koziarz) writes:
>occuring upon the desktop.  With the advent of multitasking, I think a much
>better idea would be to provide auditory feedback on background processes,
>since your visual channel is already preoccupied with the foreground task. 
>Why not use the other hemishpere as long as it's idle, right?

There was a presentation at CHI '91 about using sounds (in this case musical
notes and instruments) to monitor the processors in a parallel machine.
One example assigned each processor a note, and increased the amplitude the
proportional to the length that the processor had been idle.  The other
example used both instruments (one for each processor) and note to monitor
when messages were sent and received between pairs of processors.  To my
mind, it sounding surprisingly pleasant, when I expected cacophony.  The
people who did it are at U of Southwestern Louisiana (Albright, Francioni,
and Jackson).  The real measure of such an auralization is whether any
information can be gleaned from it, and although they said that their
parallel computing expert benefitted, there are no hard numbers to back
this up yet (this was advertised as work in progress).


>Before I get _too_ long here, I think audio could be very useful for interface
>design, but it needs to be thought out carefully.  We all rely upon audio
>feedback, like the sound your car door makes when it doesn't shut right, or
>when your muffler springs a leak.  Can anyone pick it up from here and think
>of new directions for sound?

As opposed to the musical sounds I talked about above, these examples 
fall into the category of "everday sounds."  In fact, Bill Gaver wrote
about "The Psychology of Everday Sounds," exploring when and why these
sounds work.  He and Randy Smith presented an interesting paper about
the "ARKola Simulation", which used sounds to augment a soda bottling
factory simulation.  They then tested people using the simulation (both
getting it working and dealing with problems) with and without sound, and
the sound version was more effective (and a lot more interesting the
subjects said).  I thought that neatest idea they incorporated was having
each object make sounds, and then scaling the amplitude of the sounds 
to whether it was showing the the window (this was a bigger than screen
representation), and if not, how far away from the visible region the
object was.

- Pete

Pete Welter
Institute for the Learning Sciences - Northwestern University
welter@ils.nwu.edu