Mats Liljedahl

Digiwall: an interactive climbing wall

Digiwall is a climbing wall enhanced with hardware and software. It combines the computer game with sport climbing, and extends both concepts with new features. Digiwall frees the user from focusing on a computer screen. Instead sound and music are used to convey the gaming experience. The Digiwall concept is designed to support a large number of games, competitions, challenges and even aesthetic experiences. It is an example of how technology can promote physical activity and engage peoples senses and capabilities in a way that traditional computer gaming and sport climbing do not.

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 sounds 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.

Testing two tools for multimodal navigation

The latest smartphones with GPS, electronic compasses, directional audio, touch screens, and so forth, hold a potential for location-based services that are easier to use and that let users focus on their activities and the environment around them. Rather than interpreting maps, users can search for information by pointing in a direction and database queries can be created from GPS location and compass data. Users can also get guidance to locations through point and sweep gestures, spatial sound, and simple graphics. This paper describes two studies testing two applications withmultimodal user interfaces for navigation and information retrieval. The applications allow users to search for information and get navigation support using combinations of point and sweep gestures, nonspeech audio, graphics, and text. Tests show that users appreciated both applications for their ease of use and for allowing users to interact directly with the surrounding environment.

Methods for sound design: a review and implications for research and practice

Sound design can be described as an inherently complex task, demanding the designer to understand, master and balance technology, human perception, aesthetics and semiotics. Given this complexity, there are surprisingly few tools available that meet the needs of the general designer or developer incorporating sound as design material. To attend to this situation, two software systems are being developed. The purpose with these is to inform and support general design projects where sound is one part. The first system is intended to inform early stages of sound design projects. The second system is intended to simulate the sounding dimension of physical environments. Together these tools can be used to support designers and developers when searching for, testing and evaluating sounds suitable for interfaces, products and environments. To further complement these systems, a number of methods and guidelines are being developed in tandem. Tests to verify the systems have been conducted with very promising results.

REMUPP: an interface for evaluation of relations between musical parameters and perceived properties

New media offers new roles, functions and challenges to music, calling for new methods and tools for music research. To meet these increasingly important challenges. REMUPP, a new software tool for the investigation of relations between music and perceived properties or characteristies, was designed. The ideas behind REMUPP and the technology used to realize it is deseribed. In order to test the sensitivity and validity of REMUPP. a simple experiment aimed to examine some properties of music was carried out. 38 subjects were listening to music and instructed to indicate their priority for different aspects of the music (musical parameters) while they actively controlled these aspects. The results show that REMUPP is able to bring out significant differences between the musical parameters, and that these differences correspond well with findings by others.

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.

Designing a web-based tool that informs the audio design process

Research on auditory displays has shown how various properties of sounds can influence perception and performance. However, a challenge for system developers is how to find signals that correspond to specific user situations and make sense within a user context. This paper presents a web-based tool called AWESOME Sound design tool. The fundamental idea with the tool is to give end users control over some aspects of the auditory stimuli and encourage them to manipulate the sound with a specific user scenario in mind. A first evaluation of the tool has been conducted in which aspects of both usefulness and usability were addressed.