Eyes-Free Overviews for Mobile Map Applications

We outline two new auditory interaction techniques which build upon existing visual techniques to display off-screen points of interest (POI) in map based mobile computing applications. SonicPie uses a pie menu and compass metaphor, allowing a user to scroll around the environment, hearing offscreen POIs in a spatialised auditory environment. EdgeTouch integrates with the Wedge technique of Gustafson et al. [2], sonifying the POIs as the user comes into contact with them when moving his or her finger around a “sonification border”