Defining a Family of Feedback Signals for Multimedia Communication Devices
Cynthia A. Sikora, Linda A. Roberts · 1997
A family of auditory feedback signals was created for multimedia business devices. This family was derived from a wide variety of options, including real world, musical and communications sounds. In Experiment I, typical business users mapped 48 sounds to functions and rated the pleasantness and appropriateness of the sounds. Experiment II tested the best sounds for each function (based on the findings of Experiment I) within the context of a graphical user interface business communications simulation. Users rated the pleasantness and appropriateness of each sound and selected the best sound option for each function. Experiment III evaluated the resultant family of auditory signals for discriminability using similarity ratings. Results showed that, real world sounds mapped most reliably to the functions; users consistently preferred musical sounds to the real world sounds. Of the eleven feedback signals selected for specific functions, four were communications based and seven were musical. None of the real world auditory signals were acceptable. The resulting family of sounds was generally discriminable with the exception of one pair. The apparent dimensions used to make judgments about the sound pairings were duration, average pitch and harmonic complexity.