An evaluation of earcons was carried out to see whether they are an effective means of communicating information in sound. An initial experiment showed that earcons were better than unstructured bursts of sound and that musical timbres were more effective than simple tones. A second experiment was then carried out which improved upon some of the weaknesses shown up in Experiment 1 to give a significant improvement in recognition. From the results of these experiments some guidelines were drawn up for use in the creation of earcons. Earcons have been shown to be an effective method for communicating information in a human-computer interface.Providing information in an auditory form could generally help solve this problem and allow visually disabled users the same facilities as the sighted.This evaluation is part of a research project looking at the best ways to integrate audio and graphical interfaces. The research aims to find the areas in an interface where the use of sound will be most beneficial and also what types of sounds are the most effective for communicating information.One major question that must be answered when creating an auditory interface is: What sounds should be used? Brewster [2] outlines some of the different systems available. Gaver's auditory icons have been used in several systems, such as the SonicFinder [5], SharedARK [6] and ARKola [7]. These use environmental sounds that have a semantic link with the object they represent. They have been shown to be an effective form of presenting information in sound. One other important, and as yet untested, method of presenting auditory information is the system of earcons [1, 13, 14]. Earcons are abstract, synthetic tones that can be used in structured combinations to create sound messages to represent parts of an interface. Blattner et al. define earcons as "non-verbal audio messages that are used in the computer/user interface to provide information to the user about some computer object, operation or interaction". Earcons are composed of motives, which are short, rhythmic sequences of pitches with variable intensity, timbre and register.

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BackgroundWe describe here the 3-year process underpinning a multinational collaboration to investigate soccer played at high altitude—La Paz, Bolivia (3600 m). There were two main aims: first, to quantify the extent to which running performance would be altered at 3600 m compared with near sea level; and second, to characterise the time course of acclimatisation of running performance and underlying physiology to training and playing at 3600 m. In addition, this project was able to measure the physiological changes and the effect on running performance of altitude-adapted soccer players from 3600 m playing at low altitude.MethodsA U20 Bolivian team (‘The Strongest’ from La Paz, n=19) played a series of five games against a U17 team from sea level in Australia (The Joeys, n=20). 2 games were played near sea level (Santa Cruz 430 m) over 5 days and then three games were played in La Paz over the next 12 days. Measures were (1) game and training running performance—including global positioning system (GPS) data on distance travelled and velocity of movement; (2) blood—including haemoglobin mass, blood volume, blood gases and acid–base status; (3) acclimatisation—including resting heart rate variability, perceived altitude sickness, as well as heart rate and perceived exertion responses to a submaximal running test; and (4) sleep patterns.ConclusionsPivotal to the success of the project were the strong professional networks of the collaborators, with most exceeding 10 years, the links of several of the researchers to soccer federations, as well as the interest and support of the two head coaches.

At the present time almost all information presented goes through the visual channel. This means information can be missed because of visual overload or because the user was not looking in the right place at the right time. An interface that integrates information output to both senses can capitalise on the interdependence between them and present information in the most efficient way possible.

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