Defining a Family of Feedback Signals for Multimedia Communication Devices

摘要

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 reated the pleasantness and approprateness of the sounds. Experimen II tested the best sounds for each function (based o nthe findings of Experiemnt 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 otpion 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 soudns. Of the eleven feedback signals selected for specific functions four were communications based and serven awere 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 duraton, average pitch and harmonic complexity.