Exploration and Early Sketches

Owned by Sepideh Shahi
Last updated: Apr 09, 2015

Work in progress...

General Principles:

  1. Consider that people have different sensitivities, give them power to change those sensitivities
  2. Create a tool to build multiple first class presentations (visual, sound, text) of information
  3. Apply principle 1 & 2 to give people the ability to choose, adapt and form their personal mappings

Sound Parameters

  • Pitch
  • Scale
  • Timbre
  • Tempo
  • Rhythm
  • Density
  • Energy
  • Harmonic relationships
  • Brightness
  • Roughness
  • Spatial location
  • Volume
  • Length of time/ duration

Space of Data

  • Static data e.g. diagrams, charts, etc (Please note that static data will turn into dynamic, if users are provided with means to interact with a data set and navigate in it e.g. data stream)
  • Observing a dynamic system e.g. simulation
  • User control/ Influencing data
  • Navigation within data
    • Spatially
    • Temporarily

Views on the Data

  • Data value as is
  • Rate of change (derivative- Point within data)
  • Volatility (Summary of data over time)
  • Zooming in/out
  • Shape vs. detail
  • Outliers

Ideas:

  • Build an exploration space and have users envision how to map data to audio. e.g. Tableau for data visualization.
  • Exploration vs. query
  • Things fusing into one sound.

Exploration - Session 1

In this session some of the common forms of static data such as a line diagram, a pie chart and a Venn diagram were explored in order to understand the followings:

  1. Properties that are perceived by sighted users at a glance.
  2. Mapping these properties to sound

Line Graph

  • Minimum and maximum points
  • Trend (going up to right)
  • Variability
  • 2 dependent variables
Open Questions:
  1. Providing the same level of interaction that we have in the visual graph for sonified graphs (e.g. using two fingers to select two specific points on the graph)
  2. Use of spatial vs. temporal sound, specially when the variables are not time related.
  3. Showing exact measures or numbers
  4. Use of words in sonification

Pie Chart

  • Number of values
  • Relationships/ Proportions
    • Relationship of a slice to the whole
    • Relationship of a slice to other slices
Open Questions:
  1. Use of 4 simultaneous sounds vs. use of different durations of sound

Venn Diagram

  • Membership/ Groups (either in or out of a group)
  • Degree of overlaps
  • Relative Size/ Population sets
Open Questions:
  1. Convey overlaps with multiple groups (Choir Art Installation in Ottawa)

Community Meeting Notes

March 25th, 2015

  • A screen reader user should have the ability to tab to a desired section in the data set and only hear a specific part of a data set.
  • If a table is presented, every time a cell is read out, the header related to that cell should be read out as well. Otherwise, the screen reader would just read a bunch of numbers that may not be meaningful to the user.
  • For sonified experiences, there should be an audio legend (either in the beginning, during the experience or at the end) in order to help users decode what is being played.
  • The audio legend should directly use a piece of sound that is be