Abstract

Research has suggested that adding contextual information such as reference markers to data sonification can improve interaction with auditory graphs. This paper presents results of an experiment that contributes to quantifying and analysing the extent of such benefits for an integral part of interpreting graphed data: point estimation tasks. We examine three pitch-based sonification mappings; pitch-only, one-reference, and multiple-references that we designed to provide information about distance from an origin and assess their effects on users' performances when completing point estimation tasks. Results showed that the addition of reference tones increases users accuracy with a trade-off for task completion times, and that the multiple-references mapping is particularly effective when dealing with points that are positioned at the midrange of a given axis.

Details

Title
Sonification of reference markers for auditory graphs: Effects on non-visual point estimation tasks
Author
Metatla, Oussama; Bryan-Kinns, Nick; Stockman, Tony; Fiore, Martin
Publication year
2015
Publication date
Sep 17, 2015
Publisher
PeerJ, Inc.
e-ISSN
21679843
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.1376v1
ProQuest document ID
1960530618
Copyright
© 2015 Metatla et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.