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