An evaluation of earcons for use in auditory human-computer interfaces

Authors:
Stephen A. Brewster;Peter C. Wright;Alistair D. N. Edwards
Affiliations:
Department of Computer Science, University of York, Heslington, York, Y01 5DD, UK;Department of Computer Science, University of York, Heslington, York, Y01 5DD, UK;Department of Computer Science, University of York, Heslington, York, Y01 5DD, UK
Venue:
CHI '93 Proceedings of the INTERACT '93 and CHI '93 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Year:
1993

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Abstract

An evaluation of earcons was carried out to see whether they are an effective means of communicating information in sound. An initial experiment showed that earcons were better than unstructured bursts of sound and that musical timbres were more effective than simple tones. A second experiment was then carried out which improved upon some of the weaknesses shown up in Experiment 1 to give a significant improvement in recognition. From the results of these experiments some guidelines were drawn up for use in the creation of earcons. Earcons have been shown to be an effective method for communicating information in a human-computer interface.