Auditory Graphs Are Not the “Killer App” of Sonification, But They Work

Nees, Michael A.

doi:10.1177/1064804618773563

Cited by 17 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 13 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Some would say no. Nees [2] for example, argues that sonification is simply one kind of tool that can be used to display data. He cites several successful (if not ubiquitous) examples where sonification "works."…”

Section: How Should Success Be Defined?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nees argues that if sonification in the appropriate context conveys the intended information, then the field as a whole can be considered successful. However, even those who promote most strongly the viability of widespread sonification and argue that a killer app is not required for success acknowledge that many of the roadblocks to successful sonification identified in The Sonification Report by Kramer et al in 1999 are still prevalent today [2,[4][5][6].…”

Section: How Should Success Be Defined?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, until there are intuitive, efficacious applications, skeptics will adhere to current display solutions." Twenty years later the quest for success and the "intuitive, efficacious application" or the killer app, as it came to be known, continues [2,3].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Is Sonification Doomed to Fail?

Neuhoff¹

2019

Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD 2019)

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Despite persistent research and design efforts over the last twenty years, widespread adoption of sonification to display complex data has largely failed to materialize, and many of the challenges to successful sonification identified in the past persist. Major impediments to the widespread adoption sonification include fundamental perceptual differences between vision and audition, large individual differences in auditory perception, musical biases of sonification researchers, and the interdisciplinary nature of sonification research and design. The historical and often indiscriminate mingling of art and science in sonification design may be a root cause of some of these challenges. Future sonification design efforts that explicitly strive to meet either artistic or scientific goals may lead to greater clarity and success in the field and more widespread adoption of useful sonification techniques.

show abstract

Section: How Should Success Be Defined?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: How Should Success Be Defined?mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Is Sonification Doomed to Fail?

Neuhoff¹

2019

Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD 2019)

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This example illustrates the theory-practice gap in the more traditional sense. There are few if any other examples, however, of ubiquitous deployment of sonification in practice (for a recent discussion, see [18]). Thus, for sonification, the theorypractice gap is different from the gap in other domains for which robust academic research and widespread practical applications co-exist.…”

Section: Status Of Sonification Theory and Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In fact, many of the sonification tools described in ICAD proceedings are never publicly released for use by other researchers or practitioners, much less supported and updated over time. Tools (and in some cases their associated artifacts) effectively become extinct when their developer no longer has the interest in supporting and/or resources to support the tool for other users, so designers new to sonification face considerable technical obstacles to using sound in applications (see [18], [43]). Sonification might enjoy more widespread use and deployment, which in turn would broaden the base of knowledge and feed back into the development of theory, if more general audiences (e.g., in user interface design, user experience, etc.)…”

Section: Artifact Mutabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Eight Components of a Design Theory of Sonification

Nees¹

2019

Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD 2019)

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Despite over 25 years of intensive work in the field, sonification research and practice continue to be hindered by a lack of theory. In part, sonification theory has languished, because the requirements of a theory of sonification have not been clearly articulated. As a design science, sonification deals with artifacts—artificially created sounds and the tools for creating the sounds. Design fields require theoretical approaches that are different from theory-building in natural sciences. Gregor and Jones [1] described eight general components of design theories: (1) purposes and scope; (2) constructs; (3) principles of form and function; (4) artifact mutability; (5) testable propositions; (6) justificatory knowledge; (7) principles of implementation; and (8) expository instantiations. In this position paper, I examine these components as they relate to the field of sonification and use these components to clarify requirements for a theory of sonification. The current status of theory in sonification is assessed as it relates to each component, and, where possible, recommendations are offered for practices that can advance theory and theoretically-motivated research and practice in the field of sonification.

show abstract

Parallel Chords: an audio-visual analytics design for parallel coordinates

Elmquist,

Enge,

Rind

et al. 2024

Pers Ubiquit Comput

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

One of the commonly used visualization techniques for multivariate data is the parallel coordinates plot. It provides users with a visual overview of multivariate data and the possibility to interactively explore it. While pattern recognition is a strength of the human visual system, it is also a strength of the auditory system. Inspired by the integration of the visual and auditory perception in everyday life, we introduce an audio-visual analytics design named Parallel Chords combining both visual and auditory displays. Parallel Chords lets users explore multivariate data using both visualization and sonification through the interaction with the axes of a parallel coordinates plot. To illustrate the potential of the design, we present (1) prototypical data patterns where the sonification helps with the identification of correlations, clusters, and outliers, (2) a usage scenario showing the sonification of data from non-adjacent axes, and (3) a controlled experiment on the sensitivity thresholds of participants when distinguishing the strength of correlations. During this controlled experiment, 35 participants used three different display types, the visualization, the sonification, and the combination of these, to identify the strongest out of three correlations. The results show that all three display types enabled the participants to identify the strongest correlation — with visualization resulting in the best sensitivity. The sonification resulted in sensitivities that were independent from the type of displayed correlation, and the combination resulted in increased enjoyability during usage.

show abstract

Auditory Graphs Are Not the “Killer App” of Sonification, But They Work

Cited by 17 publications

References 13 publications

Is Sonification Doomed to Fail?

Is Sonification Doomed to Fail?

Eight Components of a Design Theory of Sonification

Parallel Chords: an audio-visual analytics design for parallel coordinates

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About