Psychoacoustics of in-car switch buttons: From feelings to engineering parameters (original) (raw)
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Journal of Traffic and Transportation Engineering, 2015
Vehicle sounds are important factors of customer satisfaction and have a decisive influence on the product automobile and its quality impression. It becomes more and more important to connect customer requirements and technical specifications to develop a vehicle sound with high quality. The turn indicator sound can be described as one sound, which gives the customer an important feedback of correct function performance and can be seen as one of the sounds, which play a role in the customer's perception of vehicle quality. In a laboratory experimental study, the question was investigated, how a turn indicator sound must be designed to be perceived as pleasant and high-quality. A multidimensional approach was chosen to combine subjective customer assessments, objective psychophysiological responses of the study participants and physical parameters of the sounds. In total, 15 different turn indicator sounds were assessed by 48 subjects. The study shows how the connection of subjective and objective parameters can support product development. The multi-dimensional approach helps to derive recommendations for action to improve the sound quality of the product automobile. Also, the study shows a possibility to involve the human factor in a highly technical environment.
Haptics of in-car radio buttons and its relationship with engineering parameters
International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics, 2017
The interaction with in-car interfaces is becoming complex and multidimensional due to the addition of more and more technologies and functionalities, which can have a negative impact on driving safety. The hand exploratory behavior of in-car interfaces has been studied aiming to minimize the mental overload of the driver when looking for radio functions. Also, the subjective and emotional values associated with the interface have been considered. However, the identification and translation of these needs into design specifications is problematic. The objective of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of these issues by studying the relationships between users' preferences and engineering parameters of in-car radio buttons and, on the other hand, the identification of the more important engineering parameters for a better definition of the in-car interface requirements. The research was done based on an empirical study and the analysis combined exploratory statistics of preference ratings and qualitative content analysis, with partial least squares regressions and artificial neural networks to link the preferences with the buttons' engineering parameters. Relevance to industry: This paper proposes a set of haptic engineering parameters for in-car interface buttons in order to help the manufacturers and their clients to better define interface requirements related to subjective needs of the user, and so, with a positive impact on product development costs and delays. The developed methodology can be also used in other products.
2C2-2 Modelling of the Auditory Satisfaction Function for the Automobile Door Opening Quality
The Japanese journal of ergonomics, 2015
This study aims to determine the affective response that occurs when the driver listens to door opening sound of vehicles by analyzing the relationship of sound parameters and the affective satisfaction. For the purpose of this study, we conducted an experiment with 26 vehicles and 30 subjects. The subjects evaluated the door opening sounds of the vehicles on affective satisfaction by answering a standard affective evaluation. Through multiple regression analysis, the result of evaluation was utilized to create a model that can presume the satisfaction of door opening sound. As the result of the regression analysis, 'SharpnessZ', 'Short-term loudness', and 'Roughness' turned out to be the sound parameters that have significant impact on improving the satisfaction of vehicle door opening sound. Moreover, the affective adjectives 'Unstable', 'Quiet', and 'Clear' were confirmed to be the affective variables that influence the auditory satisfaction in the door opening quality. Through statistical analysis on the satisfaction of the opening sounds, we expect that a satisfaction model of vehicle door opening sounds can be developed based on the auditory parameters and the affective adjectives of vehicle door opening quality-to further aid designing procedure of vehicle door opening quality for improving affective satisfaction.
Development of a Prediction Model of Acoustic Discomfort in Cars for Engine Idle Sounds
2011
Sound quality can be described as the relation between the perceptual reactions that reflect the customer's acceptance of a product that generates sound. Initially, A-weighted sound level was the only parameter used in the acoustic assessment. Since the 1950s, psychoacoustic investigations have contributed to enhance the correlation between hearing sensations and objective parameters that define the sound. Nowadays, the application of sound quality in product design is widely extended in the industry, being considered an important field study by the main automobile manufacturers. This aspect has become as important as other specifications that define the vehicle (design, equipment, colour, price...). Therefore, sound quality would be considered as a distinguishing factor that could contribute to the car purchase decision. This paper describes the development of a methodology to obtain a predicted model of acoustic annoyance applied to sounds of engines running on idle of compact cars, a feature that the customer can test in the car dealership in the process of purchase. Firstly, binaural recordings of eight car engines have been carried out by means of a digital artificial head placed on the seat of the driver. Main psychoacoustic parameters (level, loudness, sharpness, roughness...) were calculated. Afterwards, the design of a jury test was set up taking into account the kind of sounds to be evaluated. The recordings were presented to 12 subjects to assess the real sounds in a rate scale depending on the discomfort level perceived. The jury test was carried out in a laboratory where each subject listened to the recordings by means of headphones connected to an equalizer, making possible the reproduction of the sounds in an accurate binaural way and providing listeners with a realistic acoustic experience as if they were inside the vehicle. Finally, a model was established to predict the comfort rate for each sound using the psychoacoustic parameters as predictors.
Potential of Application of Psychoacoustics to User Product Interaction Design
Product design helps people to access to technological devices through the development of a product interface. It is also capable of influencing people's interaction with others and with the environment, and of affecting the emotional response of product users, as the evolution of this activity to a new approach that can be defined as product semantics design. Thus, the product itself is a communicative system, and an understanding of it depends on the congruence of the sensorial properties perceived by the user with the concept of the product. Therefore, given that sound is one of the essential stimuli perceived by users, it is also one of the vital parameters to be configured by the designer, and the knowledge of the communicative capacities of sounds and their properties must be incorporated into the product design process. This paper reviews some of the more relevant studies in the field of sound from a perspective of its potential application to product interaction design, and critically analyses their main contributions to date and their potential application in order to contribute to the proposal for future lines of work.1
Analysis of car door closing sound quality
Applied Acoustics, 2008
The perception of the noise coming from a car's door closure has been analysed, the focus being put on the image of the quality of the car that the listener can have in mind while hearing the sound. Different experiments have been realized : a classification experiment for reducing the number of stimuli without any loss of generality, paired comparisons with similarity and preference ratings and, finally, free verbalizations analysis. The results have agreed on the importance of two timbre parameters, the frequency balance of the sound and its cleanness (only one temporal event should be audible). In particular, even if loudness had appeared as the most important sound feature in previously published studies, it did not in this one; the reason is probably that previous studies had focused on annoyance creating by sounds. In a more general way, this study has proved the stability of the perceptual space derived from two different methods : a multi-dimensional analysis of similarity ratings and the analysis of free verbalizations.
From acoustic descriptors to evoked quality of car door sounds
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2014
This article describes the first part of a study aiming at adapting the mechanical car door construction to the drivers' expectancies in terms of perceived quality of cars deduced from car door sounds. A perceptual cartography of car door sounds is obtained from various listening tests aiming at revealing both ecological and analytical properties linked to evoked car quality. In the first test naive listeners performed absolute evaluations of five ecological properties (i.e., solidity, quality, weight, closure energy, and success of closure). Then experts in the area of automobile doors categorized the sounds according to organic constituents (lock, joints, door panel), in particular whether or not the lock mechanism could be perceived. Further, a sensory panel of naive listeners identified sensory descriptors such as classical descriptors or onomatopoeia that characterize the sounds, hereby providing an analytic description of the sounds. Finally, acoustic descriptors were calculated after decomposition of the signal into a lock and a closure component by the Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) method. A statistical relationship between the acoustic descriptors and the perceptual evaluations of the car door sounds could then be obtained through linear regression analysis.
Applied Acoustics, 2018
The sound quality of automotive components is becoming more and more important in the customer perception of the vehicle quality. In the present study, the sound quality of power windows was investigated through subjective and objective analyses of experimentally recorded sounds. In particular, a jury test based on Verbal Attribute Magnitude Estimation and Paired Comparison techniques was developed and presented. The combination of the two methods is a novel aspect with respect to the literature and resulted in a useful and simpler mean to obtain coherent subjective judgments. In order to quantify the power window sound quality, objective parameters were obtained applying acoustic and psychoacoustic metrics, resulting well correlated with the correspondent subjective evaluations. Additionally, correlation analyses between subjective overall (i.e. independent) judgements on sound quality and subjective dependent or objective parameters were performed. Regression analyses were applied to develop models of perceived component quality, powerfulness and annoyance. The subjective and objective quantities related to the features of loudness, sharpness and steadiness of the electric motor were found to be prominent in sound quality evaluation.
User satisfaction modeling framework for automotive audio interfaces
International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics, 2014
Currently the research on product satisfaction is evolving to integrate pleasure and delight alongside other, more traditional needs. Pleasure and delight are emotional and hedonic benefits experienced by the user when interacting with the product. Thus, user satisfaction models have to deal with high complexity of product properties that collectively contribute to satisfaction. The formulation of these models has to include not only a proper taxonomy, but also the organization of such properties in categories and their relation to well defined satisfaction dimensions. Successful models would help to find out the most effective technical and design specifications (engineering parameters) that give shape to specific attributes of design, sometimes called "brand feelings", defined in accordance with the business strategy. The objective of this paper is to present a user satisfaction modeling framework that deals with the complexity of an in-car user interface, namely the audio one. The proposed framework defines three distinct types of product properties: engineering parameters (P), perceived product attributes (A) and satisfaction dimensions (D) and presents a methodology to link the perceived product attributes (A) to satisfaction dimension (D). Relevance to industry: Better understanding of the relationships between perceived and formal properties of automotive audio interfaces in order to contribute to better define their technical and design specifications.
Proceedings of the Human Factors Society Annual Meeting, 1992
The sensory environment of the vehicle is an area where customer expectations have greatly increased in recent years. For example, sound quality has become a very important factor in determining customer perception of vehicle quality and value. In this paper, a method for evaluating sound quality is presented and used in an engine design application. As part of the design of a future midsize vehicle, 14 engine component modifications were being considered as ways to improve sound quality. A subjective evaluation was carried out to determine if these modifications had any effect on perceived sound quality and, if so, which modifications provided the greatest sound quality benefit. A paired comparison method was used in which subjects judged, first, similarity and, then, preference. The similarity results showed that the vehicle sounds were indeed perceived quite differently. Additional analysis, using multidimensional scaling, revealed that most of these differences could be attribut...