Auditory Icons: Using Sound in Computer Interfaces

ABSTRACT

Carroll and Campbell have exercised themselves over a straw man not subscribed to by us. In doing so, they have misrepresented our position and even the statements in our paper. In reply, we restate as clearly as we can the position for which we actually did and do argue and give examples of their misrepresentations. The underlying issue seems to concern the advantages of using technical psychological theories to identify underlying mechanisms in human-computer interaction. We argue that such theories are an important part of a science of human-computer interaction. We argue further that technical theories must be considered in the context of the uses to which they are put. Such considerations help the theorist to determine what is a good approximation, the degree of formalization that is justified, the appropriate commingling of qualitative and quantitative techniques, and encourages cumulative progress through the heuristic of divide and conquer.