The purpose of the project was to use sound in the interface as a spatial orientation for the user in visually disabling environments (e.g., fog, frost etc). I used some filters to distort bookshelves images and guide the user to the right menu. There are three menus: “cashier”, “books”, “hall” that were represented by metaphorical sound icons. These icons were playing when the user rolled the mouse over the related fields. This project is a basic example of how auditory icons can be used as guidance. In a secondary study, I did not use any images and tried to make the user solve a puzzle, once more through sounds, with the experience from the previous study.

This auditory interface was selected for the book curated by Steven Heller and Lita Talarico that presents extraordinary class projects from the design schools around the world: http://amzn.to/WkFuG3

Image

The figures below illustrate the menu images used in the project to which a related auditory icon was mapped.