Noise and other stuff Dr Paul Vickers 1

School of Informatics

School Research Conference 2003

Noise, mobility, accessibility, and other stuff

Paul Vickers research activity

Noise and other stuff Dr Paul Vickers 2

School Research Conference 2003School of Informatics

Last year

• In 2002 I talked about– Auditory displays

• Program auralisation• Sonification• Audio in surgery

– Web design for children– Accessibility– Auditory displays for the elderly– Mobile usability

Noise and other stuff Dr Paul Vickers 3

School Research Conference 2003School of Informatics

Program auralisation

• Publications– Vickers, P. & Alty, J. L. (2002). “Using Music to Communicate Computing Information.”

Interacting with Computers 14(5): 435-456.– Vickers, P. & Alty, J. L. (2002). “Musical Program Auralisation: A Structured Approach to

Motif Design.” Interacting with Computers 14(5): 457-485.– Vickers, P. & Alty, J. L. (2002). “When Bugs Sing.” Interacting with Computers 14(6): 793-

819.– Vickers, P. & Alty, J. L. (2003). “Siren Songs and Swan Songs: Debugging with Music.”

Communications of the ACM, in press 46(7).

• 2 MSc students working on Java auralisations

• Preparing EPSRC bid to look at auditory/visual external representations in program comprehension

Noise and other stuff Dr Paul Vickers 4

School Research Conference 2003School of Informatics

EARCADE

• External Auditory Representations in Program Comprehension and Debugging– To compare auralisations with visualisations– Program flow, data flow, data structure– Anticipate multimodal representations to be very

powerful

Noise and other stuff Dr Paul Vickers 5

School Research Conference 2003School of Informatics

Accessibility & AD for the elderly

• Publications:– Sainz-Salces, F. J., England, D. & Vickers, P. (2002). Multimodal Human-Computer

Interface, in Proc Vol 2 HCI 2002: 16th British HCI Group Annual Conference, London, UK, 2-6 September.

– Sainz-Salces, F. J., England, D. & Vickers, P. (2003). Household Appliances Control Device for the Elderly, in Proc ICAD '03 9th International Conference on Auditory Display, Boston, MA, 7-9 July.

• Reworking EPSRC bid to develop an equal opportunities interface

• ACM Conference on Universal Usability 2003– Program Committee– Submitted a paper: “Designing for the elderly and visually

impaired” (Sainz Salces, F.J., England, D., & Vickers, P.)

• Submitted short paper to HCI 2003 “Household Appliance Control: Designing for the Elderly”

Noise and other stuff Dr Paul Vickers 6

School Research Conference 2003School of Informatics

Domotics for the Elderly (PhD project)

• Designing interfaces that can support independent living for elderly and disabled people

• Prototype home appliance monitoring and control system

• Multimodal interface incorporating icons and earcons– Much more efficient than visual interface alone– Memorability of tunes an issue

Noise and other stuff Dr Paul Vickers 7

School Research Conference 2003School of Informatics

Mobile usability

• Presentations:– Buranatrived, J. & Vickers, P. (2002). An Investigation of the Impact of Mobile Phone

and PDA Interfaces on the Usability of Mobile-Commerce Applications, in Proc Proc IWNA5: 5th IEEE International Workshop on Networked Appliances, Liverpool, UK, 30-31 October. ISBN 0-7803-7686-2.

– Clement, P. & Vickers, P. (2002). From Server to PDA: An HCI Perspective on Porting Wireless Roaming Business Applications, in Proc 5th IEEE International Workshop on Networked Appliances (IWNA5), Liverpool, UK, 30-31 October, IEEE, Piscataway, NJ. ISBN 0-7803-7686-2.

• Organising committee of IWNA 6• MSc students: mobile device location

sensing, and overcoming lack of screen space on mobile devices

Noise and other stuff Dr Paul Vickers 8

School Research Conference 2003School of Informatics

Auditory Texture Evaluation

• Support of online purchasing of apples• Sal Fiore and I are setting up experiment to

see if the addition of the sounds of biting apples to an e-commerce site:– Increases users’ ability to generate accurate

expectations of apple characteristics– And/or increases users’ confidence in their choice

of apples for online purchasing