Abstract
In this work, we show how simple sound patterns can be used to direct a person’s attention towards specific locations, when the sound is emitted from a single, fixed position. In interaction design, this is an effect most often achieved using visual ques, such as animations or flashing lights. Using sound instead is useful in situations where visual ques are undesirable or unfeasible. We designed two experiments with a total of n = 45 respondents. 10 different sound patterns were composed with inspiration from previous studies and used as stimuli. The results showed significant differences (p = 0.05) for directing the gaze upwards and downwards and trends for left-right. The composed sounds require no prior training, or knowledge of cultural references (contrary to e.g. earcons and auditory icons) by the respondents and can thus be regarded as universal in nature.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Pratt, C.C.: The Spatial Character of High and Low Tones. Journal of Experimental Psychol. 13, 278–285 (1930)
Blauert, B.: Spatial Hearing – The Psychophysics of Human Sound Localization. The MIT Press, Cambridge (1997). Revised edition
Roffler, S.K., Butler, R.A.: Factors that influence the localization of sound in the vertical plane. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 43(6), 1255–1259 (1968)
Mudd, S.A.: Spatial stereotypes of four dimensions of pure tone. J. Exp. Psychol. 66(4), 347–352 (1963)
Simon, J.R., Mewaldt, S.P., Acosta Jr., E., Hu, J.-M.: Processing auditory information of two population stereotypes. J. Appl. Psychol. 61(3), 354–358 (1976)
Walker, B.N., Ehrenstein, A.: Pitch and pitch change interact in auditory displays. J. Exp. Psychol.: Appl. 6(1), 15–30 (2000)
Walker, R.: The effects of culture, environment, age, and musical training on choices of visual metaphors for sound. Percept. Psychophys. 42(5), 491–502 (1987)
Gaver, W.W.: Auditory icons: using sound in computer interfaces. Hum.-Comput. Interact. 2, 167–177 (1986)
Gaver, W.W.: The SonicFinder, an interface that uses auditory icons. Hum. Comput. Interact. 4, 67–94 (1989)
Blattner, M., Sumikawa, D., Greenberg, R.: Earcons and icons: their structure and common design principles. Hum.-Comput. Interaction 4(1), 11–44 (1989)
Brewster, S.A., Wright, P.C., Edwards, A.D.N.: A detailed investigation into the effectiveness of earcons. In: Kramer, G. (ed.) Auditory Display, pp. 471–498. Addison-Wesley, New York (1994)
Gaver, W.W.: Auditory Interfaces. Handbook of human-computer interaction (1997)
Acknowledgements
We received financial support for this work from Aalborg University and Innovation Fund Denmark, through the Danish Infinit network. Musician Keld Bauman composed and rendered the D-sounds for us. Bang and Olufsen A/S provided the loudspeakers and amplifiers used in the experiment. Finally, we thank all our respondents for lending us their ears and time.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Larsen, L.B., Jensen, S.S., Baunstrup, M. (2018). Directing Untrained Users’ Attention Using Simple Sound Patterns. In: Ho, A. (eds) Advances in Communication of Design. AHFE 2017. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 609. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60477-0_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60477-0_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-60476-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-60477-0
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)