Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 8.3.
Presentation of the structure used in the rest of the study
8.2.2.
Sonification
Introduced in the 1990s, in particular by Kramer [KRA 94], sonification is a
process of information transmission and representation of data via the auditory
modality; it can be seen as the equivalent of visualization for the visual modality (we
indeed sometimes speak of audification to define the most basic approach of
sonification). According to [VIA 07], “sonification […] aims to exploit the auditory
modality by translating visual information in a sound form in order to limit the
overload of information provided by the graphic interfaces. In the case of abstract
data flows, observation by audition is better than vision for locating temporal
structures”. This technique, which enables the reading of data, is therefore
particularly well adapted to contexts where visual attention is solicited as a priority.
Sonification techniques are based, first of all, on three fundamental concepts
(more details being given in section 8.3):
- The notion of “
earcon
”, synthetic sound for which the sound/meaning
relationship is arbitrary - or symbolic - and must therefore be learned by the user.
This idea was initially introduced by Blattner [BLA 89]. The benefit of earcons is
that it can easily represent a hierarchical structure by playing on the modulation of
sound and musical characteristics: pitch, tone, rhythm, duration, etc.
- The notion of “
auditory icon
” introduced by Gaver [GAV 86], which
establishes a direct - or metaphorical - link with the object or concept that it
represents, by referring to a sound from our daily environment (for example, the
sound of crumpled paper when the desktop recycle bin is emptied). The auditory
icon is therefore almost directly comprehensible to the user. An implementation of
this approach can be found in particular in the works of Barrass [BAR 97] or
Conversy [CON 98], [CON 00].
- The notion of “
spearcon
” - contraction of “speech” and “earcon” - is based on
a vocal synthesis compressed in time, but at a constant pitch; as if a person was
speaking faster - therefore compressing, even deleting, certain syllables - but
keeping the same tone. The recognition of the word or group of words is not
