Design Implications for a Ubiquitous Ambient Sound Display for the Deaf (original) (raw)

Evaluating non-speech sound visualizations for the deaf

Sounds such as co-workers chatting nearby or a dripping faucet help us maintain awareness of and respond to our surroundings. Without a tool that communicates ambient sounds in a nonauditory manner, maintaining this awareness is difficult for people who are deaf. We present an iterative investigation of peripheral, visual displays of ambient sounds. Our major contributions are: (1) a rich understanding of what ambient sounds are useful to people who are deaf, (2) a set of visual and functional requirements for a peripheral sound display, based on feedback from people who are deaf, (3) lab-based evaluations investigating the characteristics of four prototypes, and (4) a set of design guidelines for successful ambient audio displays, based on a comparison of four implemented prototypes and user feedback. Our work provides valuable information about the sound awareness needs of the deaf and can help to inform further design of such applications.

Head-Mounted Display Visualizations to Support Sound Awareness for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing

Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2015

Persons with hearing loss use visual signals such as gestures and lip movement to interpret speech. While hearing aids and cochlear implants can improve sound recognition, they generally do not help the wearer localize sound necessary to leverage these visual cues. In this paper, we design and evaluate visualizations for spatially locating sound on a headmounted display (HMD). To investigate this design space, we developed eight high-level visual sound feedback dimensions. For each dimension, we created 3-12 example visualizations and evaluated these as a design probe with 24 deaf and hard of hearing participants (Study 1). We then implemented a real-time proof-of-concept HMD prototype and solicited feedback from 4 new participants (Study 2). Study 1 findings reaffirm past work on challenges faced by persons with hearing loss in group conversations, provide support for the general idea of sound awareness visualizations on HMDs, and reveal preferences for specific design options. Although preliminary, Study 2 further contextualizes the design probe and uncovers directions for future work.

Can you see what I hear? The design and evaluation of a peripheral sound display for the deaf

2003

Abstract We developed two visual displays for providing awareness of environmental audio to deaf individuals. Based on fieldwork with deaf and hearing participants, we focused on supporting awareness of non-speech audio sounds such as ringing phones and knocking in a work environment. Unlike past work, our designs support both monitoring and notification of sounds, support discovery of new sounds, and do not require a priori knowledge of sounds to be detected.

Using Peripheral Displays to Provide the Deaf with Awareness of Environmental Audio

2003

ABSTRACT We developed two peripheral sounds displays for the deaf based on fieldwork with hearing and deaf participants. The Spectrograph display depicts sound amplitude and pitch and the Positional Ripples display depicts sound amplitude and position. We improve over currently available tools for the deaf by supporting the monitoring and notification of sounds and the discovery of new sounds without requiring a priori knowledge of the sound to be monitored.

Visualizing non-speech sounds for the deaf

Sounds constantly occur around us, keeping us aware of our surroundings. People who are deaf have difficulty maintaining an awareness of these ambient sounds. We present an investigation of peripheral, visual displays to help people who are deaf maintain an awareness of sounds in the environment. Our contribution is twofold. First, we present a set of visual design preferences and functional requirements for peripheral visualizations of nonspeech audio that will help improve future applications. Visual design preferences include ease of interpretation, glance-ability, and appropriate distractions. Functional requirements include the ability to identify what sound occurred, view a history of displayed sounds, customize the information that is shown, and determine the accuracy of displayed information. Second, we designed, implemented, and evaluated two fully functioning prototypes that embody these preferences and requirements, serving as examples for future designers and furthering progress toward understanding how to best provide peripheral audio awareness for the deaf.

A Methodological Framework for Auditory Display Design

2013

Common practice in the design of auditory display is hardly ever based on any structured design methodology. This leaves audio being widely underused or used inappropriately and inefficiently. We analyse the current status of research in this context and develop requirements for a methodological framework for auditory display design. Based on these requirements, we have created a framework of methods to capture, transfer and apply design knowledge based on design patterns paco ad. We present the context space as the organising principle to conceptualise the design space facilitating the matching of design knowledge with solutions and the workflow. Finally, we elaborate on how we intend to evaluate the framework and how it can be supported by tools. [

ICAD09-1 a Communal Map of Design in Auditory Display

2015

The workshop on Recycling Auditory Displays at ICAD 2008 aimed to capture knowledge about the design of auditory displays from the participants in a manner that would be easy to understand and reuse. The participants introduced themselves by providing examples of a good and a bad sound design. These examples raised issues of culture, identity, aesthetics and context that are more usually associated with product sound design than auditory display. Based on these discussions the themes Users, Applications, Techniques, and Environments were chosen to focus the further development of ideas. A mindmapping session was used to collect over 150 entries under these themes, and more than 30 references. An additional Others theme was needed for ideas that did not fit neatly into the existing categories. The information that has been collected shows that most research in auditory display falls under the themes of Applications and Techniques. The information under the themes of Users and Others ...

Visually supported design of auditory user Interfaces

2003

This paper describes the functionality, the used models and an evaluation of the Visual Auditory Interface Design (Visual-AID) prototyping tool which assists the Usability Engineering Process for Auditory User Interfaces (AUI). The process generalizes the experiences made in the INVITE-ZIB-Project, which creates an auditory Web browser for blind users (Donker et al. 2002). The complete user-centered design process defines three main components: guidelines and rules, auditory interaction objects (audIO) and a tool to generate evaluation mock-ups.

Auditory displays and auditory user interfaces: art, design, science, and research

Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces

For almost 3 decades, research on auditory displays and sonification has been well advanced. Now, the auditory display community has arrived at the stage of sonic information design with a more systematic, refined necessity, going beyond random mappings between the referents and sounds. Due to its innate transdisciplinary nature of auditory display, it would be difficult to unify the methods to study it. This special issue covers a diverse collection of approaches to auditory displays, involving art, design, science, and research. Accordingly, the works in the present special issue included new theories, frameworks, methods, and applications about auditory displays and auditory user interfaces. We hope that this special issue can provide the state of art of auditory display research and auditory user interface design, offering fresh inspiration and motivation to researchers and designers for their future works.