Soundscape evaluation to identify audio visual aspects in café for student's activities

Abstract

A café is a type of restaurant that typically serves coffee and tea, in addition to light refreshments such as baked goods or snacks. Nowadays, students also consider cafés as a social place to do various activities. The different activities might need a different environment. However, the existing studies regarding the soundscape in a café do not consider the different activities and only focus on the auditory aspects. In this study, the activities in a café and the important audio-visual aspects are identified. This information is beneficial to design appropriate cafés environment for different student activities. The data were collected using an online survey. The survey asked several pieces of information such as activity preference and audio-visual preference. The survey shows that the students' activities in a café are classified into four types: discussion-chatting (27%), group-studying (27%), eating drinking (20%), self-studying (16.5%), and others (9.6%). The survey also shows the five most important audio and visual aspects in a café: general noise (13.61%), dynamics (8.9%), the loudness of music (8.12%), color contrast (8.12%), and hubbub (7.85%).