Can you Hear me Now?

Interaction with computers involves a lot more than seeing and clicking. For one thing, technology is becoming more and more ubiquitous, and a reliance on visual metaphors, such as the WIMP and desktop metaphors, simply does not capture the full richness of interactive experiences (eg mobile devices with small screens) and the wide spectrum of users’ abilities and contexts (eg outdoor activities, visual impairment). Sound is now a key component of many types of interaction, and this award-winning paper takes a closer look at how the auditory modality can be used to both represent and support users as they access and manipulate visually represented information.

The researchers point out that moving from the visual to the auditory modality brings many challenges, one of the main ones being the change from space to time representation. Graphically, information is represented through space, whereas sound is fundamentally temporal, and this presents interesting design challenges, such as how to support efficient indexing of information for easy retrieval, how to support navigation and orientation in an auditory interface. These challenges require a shift in design perspective that must be driven by a deeper understanding of the pros and cons of each modality.

Sound delivers a great deal of information that we use almost indispensably in our everyday interaction with the world. Yet such benefits do not extend to our experience with computers in particular and technology in general: we believe that our research will contribute knowledge to bridge such gap in the field.


Constructing Relational Diagrams in Audio: The Multiple Perspective Hierarchical Approach, by Oussama Metatla and Nick Bryan-Kinns is the winner of the International Excellence Prize, which will be presented at HCI 2009 in Cambridge this September.

Associated Link: Full programme at HCI 09

Passwords that are Simple - and Safe
Source: MIT Technology Review, 29 July 2010
 
Researchers at Microsoft have come up with a way to create easy-to-remember passwords without making a system more vulnerable to hackers.

Coercing people into a Brave New digital World
Source: Spiked, 27 July 2010
 
Does a government-backed campaign to get the entire UK adult population online threaten to make cyber slaves of us all?

iPhone 4 one month on – A user experience and functionality success, despite antenna issues
Source: Webcredible, 26 July 2010
 
Webcredible Senior Consultant, Abid Warsi suggests that the impressive functionality and user experience of the iPhone 4 is enough to overcome the widely reported technical issues, thus proclaiming the device a big success.

Darwin City Council Website - Australia’s Most Usable!
Source: Loop11, 24 July 2010
 
Darwin City Council came out on top in a recent website usability study of Australia's capital city councils. The aim was to discover which of the six council websites was the most user friendly and usable.

Digital Design Jobs first to experience Growth
Source: UN, 23 July 2010
 
The marketing and design industry in the UK is seeing strong signs of renewed confidence, according to the new European Market Eye report from the industry’s specialist recruitment consultancy, Aquent.

Usability at a Glance
Source: usability-ed, 22 July 2010
 
Something interesting and useful to print out and stick on your wall.

Google may know your Desires before You do
Source: New Scientist, 21 July 2010
 
In future, your Google account may know your birthday and anniversaries, consumer gadget preferences, preferred hobbies and pastimes, even favourite foods. It will also know where you are.

Closing the Usability Gap between Enterprise Applications and Consumer Web Applications
Source: Integrated Solutions for Retailers, 20 July 2010
 
New White Paper on Workforce Management and the increasingly ancient software which controls it.

Collect Words, not just Numbers with Feedback Analytics
Source: CMS Wire, 19 July 2010
 
Tracking visitors’ behaviors online can help us understand how customers use a site - but what if you could actually ask each individual a question? That’s what Kampyle aims to do with its feedback analytics tools.

Back to the Future...
Source: ZDNet, 17 July 2010
 
Always a popular sport, comparing the PC with the motor industry is as relevant as ever.