Musicons (brief samples of well-known music used in auditory interface design) have been shown to be memorable and easy to learn. However, little is known about what actually makes a good Musicon and how they can be created. This paper reports on an empirical user study (N=15) to explore the recognition rate and preference ratings for a set of Musicons that were created by allowing users to self-select 5 second sections from (a) a selection of their own music and (b) a set of control tracks. It was observed that sampling a 0.5 second Musicon from a 5-second musical section resulted in easily identifiable and well liked Musicons. Qualitative analysis highlighted some of the underlying properties of the musical sections that resulted in ‘good’ Musicons. A preliminary set of guidelines is presented that provides a greater understanding of how to create effective and identifiable Musicons for future auditory interfaces
