Usability Views Article Details  home | timeline | recent | popular | e-reports | userati | books | about  A Framework for Auditory Data Exploration and Evaluation with Geo-referenced Data Sonification (06 Nov 2005) iSonic integrates the use of speech and musical sounds. Values are categorized into 5 ranges, as in many choropleth maps, and mapped to five violin pitches. The same mapping is used in the table view. Various musical instruments are used to indicate when users are outside the map or crossing a region border in the touchpad interface, or crossing a water body to reach a neighboring region in the keyboard interface. Stereo panning effects are used to indicate a regions azimuth position on the virtual auditory map. It is also used in the table to indicate the column order. Using the plus and minus keys, users can switch among four information levels for each region: region name only, musical sound only, name and sound, name and sound plus reading of the numerical value. There are many alternatives. Sound duration can present the value but would significantly prolong the feedback and is not appropriate when values of many regions need to be presented. Region locations could be mapped to sound locations using virtual spatial sound synthesized with Head Related Transfer Functions (HRTF). Spatial sound provides high perceptual resolution in the azimuth plane, but is not satisfactory in the elevation plane, especially when a generic HRTF is used. Using individualized HRTF could improve the elevation perception but its measurement is a long process requiring special equipment and careful calibration. Additionally, HRTF spatial sound is computing intensive. While we have connected iSonic to a virtual spatial sound server and plan to investigate the use of individualized HRTF spatial sound, we currently focus on MIDI stereo sound. We also tried to play a piano pitch after each violin value pitch to indicate the regions elevation position. Unfortunately, such extra sound was not found to increase performance [28]. iSonic supports AISAs in both the table and the map views, including sequential brushing between the two views. Each interface function can be activated from a menu system that also gives the hotkey and a brief explanatory message. Article URL: http://hcil.cs.umd.edu/trs/2005-28/2005-28.htm Read 71 more articles from University Of Maryland sorted by date, popularity, or title. Next Article: Maintaining Concentration to Achieve Task Completion          Books about Usability | Information Architecture | Information Visualisation | Technology History This site is a labour of love built by Chris McEvoy