Optimal Alarm Sound Design

Optimal s quarterdalise level-headed propose New traffic pattern change for noned, exclusively lovely snuff its Author 193 interbreed 3 what the beep? ABSTRACT The object of this look for is improving s ignoredalise well-grounded object, counseling on the paradox of pronounced versus sweet experts. The propertys of irritative lives correspond in large extend to the characteristics of perceptible lowerings. wherefore it is difficult to conception an s good dealdalise system clock intelligent recording, which is broad, hardly not displease. A lot of studies be conducted along aspects which make pop offs c pointy and several(prenominal) guidelines atomic number 18 describe for tendencying noticeable appal hold outs.However, no data is conveyed just ab turn up the combination of these characteristics relate to punishing protrude. In this study an exist design bring for disheartenment conks is adjusted regarding to redolence and noticea bleness of hales. hereby rules to analyze and try out sweet and patency of live ons argon added to the accomplish. As a root this paper suggests a upstart design offset which fanny be utilize to design an alarm run considering these aspects. Keywords product run short design alarm hold up corruptive expectants noticeable safes design wait ones INTRODUCTIONMost of the time alarm sounds be not best designed, because in the majority of cases the scene of the drug substance abuser is not taken into account. Edworthy (2006) entrap that in consequence alarms argon lots excessively badly designed resulting in annoying, not effective sounds. Schmidt & international adenineere Baysinger (1986) pointed out that a idyllic sound to theme a complication squeeze out be more than effective during an emergency. However, the alarm sound should still be all the way noticeable, so that it tr ampnot be missed. Annoying sounds The wisdom of painful sensation may be rattling in-person and subjective, but research as shown that at that place argon some characteristics of sounds that bring this perceived horror. (Steele & deoxyadenosine monophosphate Chon, 2007). The research of Steele & Chon (2007) effectuate that flashiness is the or so all of the essence(p)(p) epitope of aggravator in respect to sound. They to a fault revealed that the wider the bandwidth, the more annoying the sound is perceived. higher(prenominal) frequencies and modulations increase the lore of annoyance as well (Genuit, 2001). A modulation is a change from one tone to an early(a). anyways the type of sound, in that location ar a many another(prenominal) factors that influence the percept of annoyance. One of these factors, revealed by Maris et al. 2007), is the ability to influence the sound. Another study posited that age is similarly an important aspect for determining the perception of annoyance. (Botteldooren & Verkeyn, 2002). Noticeable sounds Obviously, the patency of an alarm sound is better when the volume of the sound is higher. Edworthy (2006) pointed out some other characteristics of understandably noticeable alarms sounds, standardized high and broken in frequencies, harmonics and discontinuous sounds. Hereby alarm sounds ar respectively easier to localize, more resistant to mask by other sounds and less recoverming to interfere with communication.Harmonics are sounds with frequencies that are a multiple of the fundamental frequency. Another chemical element which makes a sound more clearly noticeable, is the variation in more than but pitch (Edworthy & Meredith, 1997). Namely, if a sound alters in more than just tone, for grammatical case frequency, the ability to distinguish it from other sounds increases. to a fault that, environmental sounds and auditory icons are easier to get word and retain (Leung, 1997 Ulfvengren, 2003). Similarities annoying and noticeable soundsThere is a lot of books wri tten approximately designing noticeable alarm sounds and near annoying sounds. However, there is barely literature which compares these both characteristics of sounds. Nevertheless, a lot of characteristics of annoying sounds are identical to the characteristics of noticeable sounds, see construe 1. get word 1. Characteristics which make sounds annoying as well as noticeable. As you brook see in this figure, loudness is an important characteristic of annoyance as well as noticeability of sound. The akin is true for high and low frequencies which are linked to a wide bandwidth and a high frequency.High frequency is also linked with harmonics, because a harmonic is a sound whose frequency is higher than the keynote of that sound observed by the ear. Furthermore, modulations contribute to an annoying sound, while discontinuous sounds provide a noticeable sound. This is conflicting, because if a sound has modulations it is not discontinuous as a result of the changes in tone. So approximately of the characteristics of annoying and noticeable sounds are similar, whereby it is hard to design an alarm sound that is noticeable, but not annoying. All the alike(p) characteristics are concent pass judgment on type of sound.However, there are other factors which grass influence the perception of annoyance and the noticeability of sound. These factors are in particular related to the context. Research of Philip (2009) also showed the kindred between the annoyance and noticeability of sound. She showed a signifi finisht correlation between the indispensableness rating and the annoyance rating of alarm sounds. The goading rating can be linked to the noticeability of the alarm sound, which in essence points towards a relationship between the annoyance and noticeability of a sound. Yet, there are no papers with guidelines or methods to deal with this problem.Purpose The overall goal of this research is improving alarm sound design, focusing on the balance betwee n noticeable and pleasant sounds. The aim of this research is suggesting a design method/ serve well which helps to bring out a balance between the noticeability and annoyance of sounds. In this paper go forth be focused on a wide thread of alarm sounds. all(prenominal) sound with a word of advice break away is taken into account. Hereby the result is usable for a variety of alarm sound designs, see figure 2. The IC is a relevant usage, because noticeability is really important in this place, but if an alarm is too annoying it is often turned off.Another example is an alarm clock. It is imported that the product helps you to come alive up in time, but if the sound is not pleasant you may baffle a bad start to the day. portend 2. Examples of products with alarm sound. For this research a literature study is through with(p) about existing methods which can be used to design alarm sounds. With these inputs and information about the annoyance and noticeability of sounds a new method is desexualized. EXISTING METHODS Design servees are more or less of the time iterative and consisting of diverse stages (Roozenburg & Eekels, 1995).Often, a design cultivate starts with a problem definition, followed by ideas to solve this problem. thence a concept is developed to construe the determined requirements and satisfy the user. (Rouse, 1991). Design process alarm sounds Edworthy and Stanton (1995) came up with a user-centered method to design alarm sounds, see figure 3. In this method, especially the noticeability of the sound is taken into account. In the method nothing is stated about the annoyance of sounds, though. From this process some stages which are also usable to design a pleasant, noticeable alarm can be derived.Important stages regarding these aspects are veritableise the fill for warning, appropriate ranking evidence, larn and confusion testify, urgency mapping test, actualization and matching test and operation test. Figure 3. Ed worthy and Stantons design process to design alarm sounds. The mentioned stages are particularly multipurpose to design a noticeable sound. whence some stages that focus on the redolence of sound can be added. likewise that, the context of the users is not taken into account. However, this is very relevant to design an alarm sound, since closely characteristics which are not conflicting are related to the context.Context Another method which can be used to design alarm sounds is etnography. Ethnography is a method to define the context by revealing the users environment and interactions between the product, user and their own physical environment (Leonard & Rayport, 1997). This is expedient for alarm sound design, since it is important to take the environment of the user, including other sounds, into account. sweetness There are some cognise proficiencys for eliciting vocal attributes of product sounds, which can be used to identify the impressiveness of sugariness of a sound.One of these methods is the Repertory grid Technique, succesfully use by Berg & Rumsey (1999) for eliciting descriptions of the sound of a product. Another procedure to touch important attributes of sounds is the duodecimal Descriptive compend (Stone et al. , 1974), whereby a descriptive language leave be developed by participants go with by a facilitator. While applying these techniques no real sound examples are used, but products are presented to recall the attributes of sound affiliated to that product. Later in the design process eliciting can be used to rank the different sound designs by annoyance.This can be done by deriving verbal attributes through a survey. Gabrielsson (1979) used this method by conducting an extensive experiment, where the participants were asked to rate the sounds according to their suitability. Another method to test the pleasantness of a sound is a representative made by Aures (1985). This model calculates the pleasantness consideri ng sharpness, roughness, tonalness and loudness, with an accuracy of more than 90%. NEW METHOD Based on the design process of Edworthy & Stanton (1995) a new design process can be suggested for designing pleasant, but noticeable alarm sounds, see figure 4.Establish need for warning As the process of Edworthy & Stanton, the new design process pull up stakes start with establishing the need for warning by identifying the alert functions of the product. This will be done to clarify the importance of noticeability of the sound, which can be used to create an optimal balance between noticeability and annoyance. For instance, when noticeability is very essential, the annoyance of a sound may be less important. discover context Then, the context will be identified by using ethnography. Hereby the physical environment of the user and the corresponding sounds are taken into account.Factors of the context can influence the annoyance and pleasantness of a sound. Therefore it is importa nt to be apprised of the context and use this during designing. Elicitation The utmost(a) step of the analyis is generalisation of sounds, whereof users think they barrack the product. By means of this method the importance of a pleasant sound can be revealed. There are devil procedures which may be appropriate to do so. The Repertory Grid Technique can be used to elicit descriptions of the sound of a product. The more the word pleasant is called as description, the more important this characteristic will be.Besides that, the Quantitative Descriptive synopsis is useful to develop a descriptive language which describes the desired attributes of a product. The outcome of this technique can be compared with those of The Reportory Grid Technique. The difference is in the way the descriptions are elicit. The Reportory Grid Technique uses product sounds and the Quantitative Descriptive Analysis uses no real sounds, but only products. Figure 4. Suggested design process regarding pleas ant, but noticeable alarm sounds Designing sounds The design of the sound can be done exactly the selfsame(prenominal) as Edworthy and Stanton escribed in their process. First, existing alertness sounds and user suggestions will be considered. afterwards that soundimagery studies can be used. test pleasantness/annoyance After designing different concept sounds, the sounds can be tried and true in terms of annoyance or pleasantness. To do so two methods are suggested. The first procedure consists of a questionairre or survey, whereby the participants should rank the sounds by annoyance. The other technique is a model developed by Aures (1985) which calculates the sensory euphony(pleasantness) of a sound regarding loudness, sharpness, tonalness and roughness. consort to these tests the sound can be modified considering pleasantness. Testing noticeability The noticeability of sounds can be tested by procedures Edworthy & Stanton (1995) described in their design process. Using t hese techniques the sounds can be tested concerning different aspects, like attainment & confusion, urgency and recogniton & matching. The learning & confusion test is ideally performed in the real context, so it will become clear if the sound can be confused with other sounds in the environment.The urgency mapping test shows if the mapping between the signal and web site is suitable in terms of urgency using existent guidelines. In the quotation & matching test participants are asked to assign the sounds to the appropriate warning function. According to these tests the sound can be better and optimized considering noticeability. DISCUSSION The adjustments of the suggested design process are really focused on the compendium and testing of pleasantness and noticeability. Consequently, the designing itself is not taken into account, but is indeed very important.Further research for this phase of the design process can be useful to reform the suggested design process. B esides that, the design process is not tested, whereby there is not been evaluated how useful the process might be. To validate the suggested process an experiment with a couple sound designers should be done. Furthermore two procedures who explore roughly the same are recommended for the elicitation phase, but only one technique is necessary in this phase. Therefore more research about these methods in regarding to pleasantness and noticeability is preferred to choose the most appropriate technique.CONCLUSION Due to the fact that most characteristics of noticeable sounds are conflicting with the characteristics of pleasant sounds, it is difficult to design a sound which is both noticeable and pleasant. However, if the designer will focus on this during the whole design process, it should be possible to find a good balance between these two aspects. Hereby it is essential to look at the context of the user and the need for warning and a pleasant sound. Furthermore the sound should b e tested on these aspects, since the characteristics are subjective and therefore defined by the user.The suggested design process can be used for a wide range of alarm sounds, which requires a noticeable as well as a pleasant sound. Some examples of such alarms are alarm clocks, microwaves and alarms in intensive care units. REFERENCES 1. Aures, W. (1985). Berechnungsverfahren skin den sensorischen Wohlklang beliebiger Schallsignale. Acustica, 59 130-141 2. Berg J. and Rumsey, F. (1999). spacial Attribute Identification and Scaling by Repertory Grid Technique and other Methods. Proc. AES 16th International Conference 3. Botteldooren, D. and Verkeyn, A. 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