Using Sound to Enhance Users’ Experiences of Mobile Applications

The latest smartphones with GPS, electronic compass, directional audio, touch screens etc. hold potentials for location based services that are easier to use compared to traditional tools. Rather than interpreting maps, users may focus on their activities and the environment around them. Interfaces may be designed that let users search for information by simply pointing in a direction. Database queries can be created from GPS location and compass direction data. Users can get guidance to locations through pointing gestures, spatial sound and simple graphics. This article describes two studies testing prototypic applications with multimodal user interfaces built on spatial audio, graphics and text. Tests show that users appreciated the applications for their ease of use, for being fun and effective to use and for allowing users to interact directly with the environment rather than with abstractions of the same. The multimodal user interfaces contributed significantly to the overall user experience

iSpooks: an audio focused game design

This paper is an attempt to analyse and explain the ‘design decision making’ behind iSpooks, an audio based adventure game for the iPhone. The game utilizes audio as its principle mechanism for driving the gameplay. The design and production team were therefore forced to look at and reconsider the ways in which a mobile phone game works. This resulted in some innovative and previously untried techniques in the design process and technical solutions developed for the project. It also, and perhaps more importantly, addressed and analysed aspects of mobile phone users behaviour in relation to these innovations. This paper covers the research and conclusions that lead to the final game design, and describes aspects such as, sound design, designing for the casual gamer, finding appropriate narrative forms and creating non-visual immersion

Designing Audio-based networked games to maximize player immersion

This is a description of a practical experiment in alternative game design, intended to test and define a new kind of player experience in mobile/net gaming. This ‘Audio-mostly’ concept is created as a test-bed and prototype for sound-based game applications. The underlying principle lies in expanding the imagination of the user, rather than the graphic capabilities of the platform. It should be noted that this research project was principally concerned with defining the design parameters and aesthetics needed for the creation of effective audio based games, it was never intended as a purely academic investigation of the subject’s reactions to the test bed. To this end, we have chosen to use a less rigid style in presenting this project It should also be noted that an audio-mostly game should not be confused with a game specifically designed for the visually impaired, instead it is a game intended for normally sighted people to be used in situations where audio-based gameplay has an advantage over traditional visual based games (Mobile phones in transit for example)

Beowulf field test paper

A practical field test, covering some of the parameters governing audio based games, designed for mobile applications utilizing new techniques with the intention of allowing greater interpretive freedom for the player. The tests are realised through an audio-based, simple game application: ‘Beowulf’

Effective interactive design through quick and flexible prototyping

One of the problems with designing new and untried applications, is the sheer effort needed to produce a testable prototype. Many projects get bogged down with production problems and hardware/software issues before they can even be tested for their basic functionality. This creates delays and frustrations within the project structure as well as creating unnecessary pressures on the project structure itself. This is equally true for the two main types of prototype/application created in design research: 1. a potential new product 2. a viable test bed to test an hypothosis. This paper investigates approaches, both practical and philosophical, to design processes and construction techniques that endeavour to bypass the most common pitfalls and stumbling blocks to a working prototype. In the main, the paper focuses on designing with ’Audio’ as an effective tool for quick, effective and emotive prototyping. Practical examples, both successful and catastrophic, are used to illustrate these aspects. In specific we will be comparing two audio based games, Journey and Beowulf, looking at their respective weaknesses and strengths. These prototyping techniques are realised, in the main, through easily available tools and recording techniques, based on standard audio-visual techniques. This provides a neat fast-track to developing ideas into viable applications. However while we can utilize a vast array of existing technologies to enable fast proto-typing, the most crucial element in successfully creating testbeds and bringing them before a test group is the intellectual approach to experiment design. Understanding the fundamental processes and isolating the essential questions the application is intended to answer has a direct bearing on our ability to channel available creative and productive energies with the maximum focus. Audio provides us with emotive tools highly suited to performing these kinds of functions. The advantage of taking this approach is a quick, flexible and, not least, economic route to getting vital early answers to practical research problems in IT user-based projects

Beowulf - An Audio Mostly Game

This paper stresses the importance and benefits of developing technique that let people use, reflect on and develop their capabilities to move, to imagine and to feel, and not only replace these abilities with computer technology. This paper describes a project that shifts focus from eye to ear in a computer game application in order to start answering questions about sound’s ability to help users create inner, mental pictures and emotional responses to a game world. Can removing components from a computer game concept enhance the experience? Is less more

Beowulf: A Game Experience Built On Sound Effects

A computer game with most of the traditional graphics removed and replaced with a detailed and realistic soundscape, can give immersive gaming experiences. By reducing the graphical, explicit output of information from the game, the player becomes free to concentrate on interpreting the implicit information from a rich sound scape. This process of interpretation seems to have the power to invoke clear inner, mental images in the player, which in turn gives strong and immersive experiences. This paper describes a project that explores some of these mechanisms and points out some new potential directions for computer games and game play design

Be Green: Implementing an Interactive, Cylindrical Display in the Real World

Many studies in Human-Computer Interaction and related fields, such as pervasive displays, have historically centered around user evaluation and knowledge production, focusing on usability issues and on creating a more efficient user experience. As the trajectory of HCI moves toward the so-called ‘third wave’, new values are being emphasized and explored. These include concepts such as embodiment and engagement, complementing usability as the primary metric of evaluation. This paper explores the ideation, iteration, design, and real-world deployment of such a ‘third wave ’ interactive pervasive installation in the form of an interactive, large cylindrical display. The purpose was to display the air quality data in a manner that would inspire elevated environmental consciousness and discussion among Umeå citizens, especially with regard to the environmental impact of different methods of transportation