Visda Goudarzi | Columbia College Chicago (original) (raw)

Papers by Visda Goudarzi

This paper is a reflection on our experience of design of an interactive instrument and its eva... more This paper is a reflection on our experience of design of an interactive instrument and its evaluation and redesign using a collaborative creativity process. This paper examines the interface from three different perspectives; designer, performer, and expert audience. The designer describes and evaluates the chain of decisions taken to release an experimental tangible interface for professional use by a duo of electronic musicians. The performers examine the usability aspects, and a group of composers participate in a creative workshop to explore different aspects of the interface in a collaborative creativity process.

gestonic is a video-based interface for the sonification of gestures for real-time sound control.... more gestonic is a video-based interface for the sonification of gestures for real-time sound control. the central role of gestures in social and musical interaction (such as conducting) was the original motivation for this project. gestonic is being used to make computer-based instruments more interactive. it also allows the musicians to create sonorous and visual compositions in real time. the system consists of a laptop's camera, the filtering of camera input via the open source software known as Processing, the sending of OSC control messages to ChucK, and finally the parameter-mapping and sound synthesis enabled by ChucK.

CHI '13 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems on - CHI EA '13, 2013

ABSTRACT The goal of this thesis is to design, develop and evaluate a 'User-Centered Desi... more ABSTRACT The goal of this thesis is to design, develop and evaluate a 'User-Centered Design' approach to sonification. Eighteen climate scientists volunteered for requirements-gathering interviews. The results showed that climate scientists are heavily depending on visual display in their data analysis workflows. An audio interface shall enrich their perceptualization possibilities, based on the language metaphors derived from the interviews.

This paper explores a variety of existing interactive and participatory sound systems and the rol... more This paper explores a variety of existing interactive and participatory sound systems and the role of different actors in them. In human computer interaction (HCI), the focal point on studying interactive systems has been the usability and functionality of the systems. We are trying to shift the focus more towards creative aspects of interaction in both technology development and sound creation. In participatory sound art, the roles of technology creator, composer, performer, and spectator are not always distinct but may overlap. We examine some challenges in such systems, like the ownership of technical and aesthetic components and balancing engagement and interaction among different stakeholders (designer, composer , spectator, etc). Finally, we propose a discussion on participation, human-computer and human-human interaction within the process of creation and interaction with the system.

Climate data provide a challenging working basis for sonification. Both model data and measured d... more Climate data provide a challenging working basis for sonification. Both model data and measured data are
assessed in collaboration with the Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change. The multi dimensionality and
multi variety of climate data has a great potential for auditory displays. Furthermore, there is consensus on global
climate change and the necessity of intensified climate research today in the scientific community and general
public. Sonification provides a new means to communicate scientific results and inform a wider audience.
SysSon is a user centered auditory platform for climate scientists to analyze data. It gives scientists broader
insights by extracting hidden patterns and features from data that is not possible using a single modal visual
interface. A variety of soundscapes to chose from lessens the fatigue that comes with repeated and sustained
listening to long streams of data. Initial needs assessments and user tests made the work procedures and the
terminology of climate scientists clear and informed the architecture of our system. Furthermore, experiments
evaluated the sound design which led to a more advanced soundscape and improvement of the auditory display.
We present a novel interactive sonification tool which combines a workspace for the scientists with a development
environment for sonification models. The tool runs on different operating systems and is released as
open source. In the standalone desktop application, multiple data sources can be imported, navigated and manipulated
either via text or a graphical interface, including traditional plotting facilities. Sound models are built from
unit generator graphs which are enhanced with matrix manipulation functions. They allow us to systematically
experiment with elements known from the visual domain, such as range selections, scaling, thresholding, markers
and labels. The models are organized in an extensible library, from which the user can choose and parametrize.
Importance is given to the persistence of all configurations, in order to faithfully reproduce sonification instances.
Finally, the platform is prepared to allow the composition of interactive sound installations, transitioning between
the scientific lab and the gallery space.

Sonification is the acoustic analogue of data visualization and takes advantage of human perceptu... more Sonification is the acoustic analogue of data visualization and takes advantage of human perceptual and cognitive
capabilities. The amount of data being processed today is steadily increasing, and both scientists and society need
new ways to understand scientific data and their implications. Sonification is especially suited to the preliminary
exploration of complex, dynamic, and multidimensional data sets, as can be found in climate science.
In the research project SysSon (https://sysson.kug.ac.at/), we apply a systematic approach to design sonifications to
climate data. In collaboration with the Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change (http://www.wegcenter.at/)
we assessed the metaphors climate scientists use and their typical workflows, and chose data sets where
sonification has high potential revealing new phenomena. This background will be used to develop an audio
interface which is directly linked to the visualization interfaces for data analysis the scientists use today.
The protoype will be evaluated according to its functionality, intuitivity for climate scientists, and aesthetic criteria.
In the current stage of the project, conceptual links between climate science and sound have been elaborated
and first sonification designs have been developed. The research is mainly carried out at the Institute of
Electronic Music and Acoustics (http://iem.kug.ac.at/), which has extensive experience in interactive sonification
with multidimensional data sets.

This chapter presents a contextual inquiry of climate scientists during data analysis tasks. Eigh... more This chapter presents a contextual inquiry of climate scientists during data analysis tasks. Eighteen scientists volunteered for requirement-gathering interviews and focus groups. The interviews have been analyzed in order to determine the implications for a complementary audio interface based on sonification. Results show that climate scientists depend heavily on visualizations, and the amount and complexity of data to be displayed are huge. Climate metaphors are assessed to help develop an intuitive sound design of the interface. The outline and basic properties of the audio tool could be determined. Furthermore, user preference of sound for the auditory display has been evaluated. The volunteers evaluated the sounds aesthetically and associated them with climate parameters. The stimuli, which have been chosen as the sonically most appealing and associated with the same parameter, are considered the optimal ones for the auditory interface.

SysSon is a research approach on introducing sonification systematically to a scientific communit... more SysSon is a research approach on introducing sonification systematically to a scientific community where it is not yet commonly used - e.g., in climate science. Thereby, both technical and socio-cultural barriers have to be met. The approach was further developed with climate scientists, who participated in contextual inquiries, usability tests and a workshop of collaborative design. Following from these extensive user tests resulted our final software framework. As frontend, a graphical user interface allows climate scientists to parametrize standard sonifications with their own data sets. Additionally, an interactive shell allows to code new sonifications for users competent in sound design. The framework is a standalone desktop application, available as open source (for details see http://sysson.kug.ac.at/) and works with data in NetCDF format.

The goal of this research is to design, develop and evaluate a 'User-Centered Design' approach to... more The goal of this research is to design, develop and evaluate a 'User-Centered Design' approach to sonification. Eighteen climate scientists volunteered for requirements-gathering interviews. The results showed that climate scientists are heavily depending on visual display in their data analysis workflows. An audio interface shall enrich their perceptualization possibilities, based on the language metaphors derived from the interviews.

Gestonic is a video-based interface for the sonification of hand gestures for real-time timbre co... more Gestonic is a video-based interface for the sonification of hand
gestures for real-time timbre control. It is being used to make
computer-based instruments with interactive control. It also allows the musicians to create sonorous and visual compositions in real time. The system consists of a laptop's camera, the filtering of camera input via the open source software known as Processing, a Neural Network for analyzing gestures, the
sending of OSC control messages to the audio-processing program ChucK, and finally the parameter-mapping and sound synthesis enabled by ChucK.

In sonification of scientific data, designers know very little about the domain science and domai... more In sonification of scientific data, designers know very little about the domain science and domain scientists are not familiar with the sonification methodology. The knowledge about the domain science is not given, but evolved during the problem-solving process. We discuss design challenges in auditory display design regarding user-centerdness and introduce an approach to involve domain scientists throughout a sonification design. We explore this within a workshop in which sonification experts, domain experts, and programmers worked together to better understand and solve problems collaboratively. The sonification framework that is used during the workshops is briefly described and the workshop process and how each group worked together during the workshop sessions is examined. Participants worked on pre-defined and exploratory tasks to sonify climate data. Resulting sonification prototypes and workshop sessions are documented on a wiki and could be used as a starting point for future sonification procedures. Furthermore, the participants grasped each others’ domains; climate scientists especially became more open to use auditory display and sonification as a tool in their data mining tasks.

Studies show that 14-to-40 year olds are spending more time at the computer and less time exercis... more Studies show that 14-to-40 year olds are spending more time at the computer and less time exercising. Using Contextual Design, our group tackled the challenge of motivating people in that demographic group to exercise more. The result is the "PEDdo" (Latin ped: foot, Persian do: two) - a device which encourages physical activity of its users in an entertaining way and reinforces positive exercise habits.

This paper presents a user centred design approach to create an audio interface in the context of... more This paper presents a user centred design approach to create an audio interface in the context of climate science. Contextual inquiry including think-aloud protocols was used to gather data about scientists' workflows in a first round of interviews. Furthermore, focus groups were used to gather information about the specific use of language by climate experts. The interviews have been analysed for their language content as well. Two goals are envisaged with this basic assessment. First, a climate terminology will help realising a domain-specific description of the sonifications that are understandable in the field. Second, identifying metaphors can help building a metaphoric sound identity for the sonification. An audio interface shall enrich their perceptualisation possibilities, based on the language metaphors derived from the interviews. Later, in a separate set of experiments, the participants were asked to pair sound stimuli with climate terms extracted from the first interviews and evaluate the sound samples aesthetically. They were asked to choose sound textures (from a set of sounds given to them) that best express the specific climate parameter and rate the relevance of the sound to the metaphor. Correlations between climate terminology and sound stimuli for the sonification tool is assessed to improve the sound design. Intuitiveness, learnability, memorability, and aesthetic preference of the sounds is measured by evaluations.

This paper discusses three experiments on the aesthetic evaluation of different sonifications. Th... more This paper discusses three experiments on the aesthetic evaluation of different sonifications. The effects of training and understanding of the auditory display on its aesthetic appealing were tested. Results showed no significant effect, but a trend towards less acceptance due to longer exposure to the sounds in general. Furthermore, there might be effects of musical ability and gender that should be further explored.

Chirping Stars is a tape piece made of sonification of Twitter data. A snapshot of the popularity... more Chirping Stars is a tape piece made of sonification of Twitter data. A snapshot of the popularity of musicians, randomly drawn in March 2012, yielded eight of the most popular stars at that time. Data of their Twitter followers shows the involvement of rapidly evolving fans of the artists on social media. The sonic interpretation of this development is created by mapping the data to parameters that modulate and re-synthesize the sound tracks of the artists.

This paper presents a contextual inquiry of climate scientists during data analysis tasks. Eighte... more This paper presents a contextual inquiry of climate scientists during data analysis tasks. Eighteen scientists volunteered for requirements-gathering interviews and focus groups. The interviews have been analyzed in order to determine the implications for a complementary audio interface based on sonification. Results showed that climate scientists depend heavily on visualizations, and the amount and complexity of data to be displayed are huge. Climate metaphors were assessed to help developing an intuitive sound design of the interface. The outline and basic properties of the audio tool could be determined.

CHI '13 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems on - CHI EA '13, 2013