Collaborating through sounds: audio-only interaction with diagrams

PhDThe widening spectrum of interaction contexts and users’ needs continues to expose the limitations of the Graphical User Interface. But despite the benefits of sound in everyday activities and considerable progress in Auditory Display research, audio remains under-explored in Human- Computer Interaction (HCI). This thesis seeks to contribute to unveiling the potential of using audio in HCI by building on and extending current research on how we interact with and through the auditory modality. Its central premise is that audio, by itself, can effectively support collaborative interaction with diagrammatically represented information. Before exploring audio-only collaborative interaction, two preliminary questions are raised; first, how to translate a given diagram to an alternative form that can be accessed in audio; and second, how to support audio-only interaction with diagrams through the resulting form. An analysis of diagrams that emphasises their properties as external representations is used to address the first question. This analysis informs the design of a multiple perspective hierarchybased model that captures modality-independent features of a diagram when translating it into an audio accessible form. Two user studies then address the second question by examining the feasibility of the developed model to support the activities of inspecting, constructing and editing diagrams in audio. The developed model is then deployed in a collaborative lab-based context. A third study explores audio-only collaboration by examining pairs of participants who use audio as the sole means to communicate, access and edit shared diagrams. The channels through which audio is delivered to the workspace are controlled, and the effect on the dynamics of the collaborations is investigated. Results show that pairs of participants are able to collaboratively construct diagrams through sounds. Additionally, the presence or absence of audio in the workspace, and the way in which collaborators chose to work with audio were found to impact patterns of collaborative organisation, awareness of contribution to shared tasks and exchange of workspace awareness information. This work contributes to the areas of Auditory Display and HCI by providing empirically grounded evidence of how the auditory modality can be used to support individual and collaborative interaction with diagrams.Algerian Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research. (MERS

“Just like meeting in person” - Examination of interdependencies in dementia-friendly virtual activities.

Many dementia-friendly social programs were adapted to online delivery due to the COVID pandemic. Hasty adaptations make it unclear how to design these programs to capture the benefits of online delivery and face-to-face interactions. To understand the complexities of program delivery, we interviewed program coordinators and held focus groups with people living with dementia (PLWD) and their informal carers. We applied an interdependence framework to examine how the relationships between individuals affect program benefits. We found that interdependencies within an organization related to finances and networking are key and that organizational and individual interdependencies converge during program delivery. Our findings suggest these two interdependencies could influence one another more effectively if technology, like video conferencing, were designed to account for it. We discuss how an expanded notion of interdependency for the design of technology helps expand inclusivity in accessible social programs

Accessible Spectrum Analyser

Presented at the 22nd International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD-2016)This paper presents the Accessible Spectrum Analyser (ASA) developed as part of the DePic project (Design Patterns for Inclusive collaboration) at Queen Mary University of London. The ASA uses sonification to provide an accessible representation of frequency spectra to visually impaired audio engineers. The software is free and open source and is distributed as a VST plug-in under OSX and Windows. The aim of reporting this work at the ICAD 2016 conference is to solicit feedback about the design of the present tool and its more generalized counterpart, as well as to invite ideas for other possible applications where it is thought that auditory spectral analysis may be useful, for example in situations where line of sight is not always possible

“Just like meeting in person” - Examination of interdependencies in dementia-friendly virtual activities.

Many dementia-friendly social programs were adapted to online delivery due to the COVID pandemic. Hasty adaptations make it unclear how to design these programs to capture the benefits of online delivery and face-to-face interactions. To understand the complexities of program delivery, we interviewed program coordinators and held focus groups with people living with dementia (PLWD) and their informal carers. We applied an interdependence framework to examine how the relationships between individuals affect program benefits. We found that interdependencies within an organization related to finances and networking are key and that organizational and individual interdependencies converge during program delivery. Our findings suggest these two interdependencies could influence one another more effectively if technology, like video conferencing, were designed to account for it. We discuss how an expanded notion of interdependency for the design of technology helps expand inclusivity in accessible social programs