Auditory icon and earcon mobile service notifications: intuitiveness, learnability, memorability and preference

ABSTRACT

With an ever increasing number of mobile services, meaningful audio notifications could effectively inform users of the incoming services while minimising undesired and intrusive interruptions. Therefore, careful design of mobile service notification is needed. In this paper we evaluate two types of audio (auditory icons and earcons) as mobile service notifications, by comparing them on 4 measures: intuitiveness, learnability, memorability and user preference. A 4-stage longitudinal evaluation involving two lab experiments, a field study and a web-based experiment indicated that auditory icons performed significantly better in all measures. Implications for mobile audio notification design are presented.

REFERENCES

• 1: Christopher Baber , Janet M. Noyes, Interactive speech technology: human factors issues in the application of speech input/output to computers, Taylor & Francis, Inc., Bristol, PA, 1993
• 2: Meera M. Blattner , Denise A. Sumikawa , Robert M. Greenberg, Earcons and Icons: Their Structure and Common Design Principles (Abstract only), ACM SIGCHI Bulletin, v.21 n.1, p.123-124, July 1989 [doi>10.1145/67880.1046599]
• 3: Block Jr F.E., Nuutinen L. and Ballast B., (1999). Optimization of Alarms: A Study on Alarm Limits, Alarm Sounds, and False Alarms, Intended to Reduce Annoyance. Journal of Clinical Monitoring and Computing, 15(2), pp. 75--83.
• 4: Bonebright, T.L., and Nees, M.A. (2007). Memory for Auditory Icons and Earcons with Localization Cues. In Proc. ICAD 2007, pp. 419--422.
• 5: Stephen A. Brewster, Using nonspeech sounds to provide navigation cues, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), v.5 n.3, p.224-259, Sept. 1998 [doi>10.1145/292834.292839]
• 6: Stephen A. Brewster , Veli-Pekka Räty , Atte Kortekangas, Earcons as a Method of Providing Navigational Cues in a Menu Hierarchy, Proceedings of HCI on People and Computers XI, p.169-183, January 1996
• 7: Stephen A. Brewster , Peter C. Wright , Alistair D. N. Edwards, An evaluation of earcons for use in auditory human-computer interfaces, Proceedings of the INTERCHI '93 conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.222-227, May 1993, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
• 8: Bussemakers, M.P., and De Haan, A. (2000). When it Sounds Like a Duck and it Looks Like a Dog ... Auditory icons vs. earcons in multimedia environments. In Proc. ICAD 2000, pp. 184--189.
• 9: Cohen, J. (1994). Monitoring Background Activities. In G. Kramer (Ed.), Auditory Display: Sonification, Audification and Auditory interfaces, pp. 499--522.
• 10: Edworthy, J. and Hards, R. (1999). Learning Auditory Warnings: The Effects of Sound Type, Verbal Labelling and Imagery on the Identification of Alarm Sounds. International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics, 24(6), pp. 603--618.
• 11: Stavros Garzonis , Chris Bevan , Eamonn O'Neill, Mobile service audio notifications: intuitive semantics and noises, Proceedings of the 20th Australasian Conference on Computer-Human Interaction: Designing for Habitus and Habitat, December 08-12, 2008, Cairns, Australia [doi>10.1145/1517744.1517793]
• 12: Gaver, W.W. (1997). Auditory Interfaces. Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction, Elsevier Science.
• 13: William W. Gaver, The SonicFinder: an interface that uses auditory icons, Human-Computer Interaction, v.4 n.1, p.67-94, March 1989 [doi>10.1207/s15327051hci0401_3]
• 14: William W. Gaver, Auditory icons: using sound in computer interfaces, Human-Computer Interaction, v.2 n.2, p.167-177, June 1986 [doi>10.1207/s15327051hci0202_3]
• 15: Graham, R. (1999). Use of Auditory Icons as Emergency Warnings: Evaluation within a Vehicle Collision Avoidance Application.Ergonomics, 42(9), pp. 1233--1248.
• 16: E. M. Hickling, Ergonomics and engineering aspects of designing an alarm system for a modern nuclear power plant, Human factors in alarm design, Taylor & Francis, Inc., Bristol, PA, 1995
• 17: Eve Hoggan , Stephen Brewster, Designing audio and tactile crossmodal icons for mobile devices, Proceedings of the 9th international conference on Multimodal interfaces, November 12-15, 2007, Nagoya, Aichi, Japan [doi>10.1145/1322192.1322222]
• 18: Ellen Isaacs , Alan Walendowski , Dipti Ranganthan, Hubbub: a sound-enhanced mobile instant messenger that supports awareness and opportunistic interactions, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: Changing our world, changing ourselves, April 20-25, 2002, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA [doi>10.1145/503376.503409]
• 19: Keller, P. and Stevens, C. (2004). Meaning from Environmental Sounds: Types of Signal-Referent Relations and their Effect on Recognizing Auditory Icons. Journal of Experimental Psychology Applied, 10(1), pp. 3--12.
• 20: Leplatre, G. and Brewster, S.A. (2000). Designing non-speech sounds to support navigation in mobile phone menus. In Proc. ICAD'00, pp. 190--199.
• 21: Leung, Y. K., Smith, S., Parker, S., and Martin, R. (1997). Learning and Retention of Auditory Warnings. In Proc. ICAD'97, pp. 288--299.
• 22: McGee-Lennon, M., Wolters M. and McBryan, T. (2007). Audio Reminders in the Home Environment. In Proc ICAD'07, pp. 437--444.
• 23: Patterson, R.D. and Mayfield, T.F. (1990). Auditory Warning Sounds in the Work Environment {and Discussion}. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, Vol. 327(1241), Human Factors in Hazardous Situations, pp. 485--492.
• 24: Sanderson, P., Wee, A., Seah, E. and Lacherez, P., (2006). Auditory Alarms, Medical Standards, and Urgency. In Proc. ICAD'06, pp. 24--27.
• 25: Cynthia A. Sikora , Linda Roberts , La Tondra Murray, Musical vs. real world feedback signals, Conference companion on Human factors in computing systems, p.220-221, May 07-11, 1995, Denver, Colorado, United States [doi>10.1145/223355.223534]
• 26: Ulfvengren, P. (2003). Design of Natural Warning Sounds in Human-Machine Systems. PhD thesis, Stockholm, Sweden 2003.
• 27: Bruce N. Walker , Gregory Kramer, Mappings and metaphors in auditory displays: An experimental assessment, ACM Transactions on Applied Perception (TAP), v.2 n.4, p.407-412, October 2005 [doi>10.1145/1101530.1101534]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Auditory (non-speech) feedback

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Evaluation/methodology

General Terms:
Experimentation

Keywords:
auditory icons, earcons, intuitiveness, learnability, memorability, mobile audio notifications, mobile services