Designing Interactions with Multilevel Auditory Displays in Mobile Audio-Augmented Reality

Abstract

Auditory interfaces offer a solution to the problem of effective eyes-free mobile interactions. In this article, we investigate the use of multilevel auditory displays to enable eyes-free mobile interaction with indoor location-based information in non-guided audio-augmented environments. A top-level exocentric sonification layer advertises information in a gallery-like space. A secondary interactive layer is used to evaluate three different conditions that varied in the presentation (sequential versus simultaneous) and spatialisation (non-spatialised versus egocentric/exocentric spatialisation) of multiple auditory sources. Our findings show that: 1) Participants spent significantly more time interacting with spatialised displays; 2) using the same design for primary and interactive secondary display (simultaneous exocentric) showed a negative impact on the user experience, an increase in workload and substantially increased participant movement; and 3) the other spatial interactive secondary display designs (simultaneous egocentric, sequential egocentric, and sequential exocentric) showed an increase in time spent stationary but no negative impact on the user experience, suggesting a more exploratory experience. A follow-up qualitative and quantitative analysis of user behaviour support these conclusions. These results provide practical guidelines for designing effective eyes-free interactions for far richer auditory soundscapes.

Extracting a Definition and Taxonomy for Audio Augmented Reality (AAR) Using Grounded Theory

“…Our literature review showed that indoor and outdoor exploration activities were of the highest importance. Most research towards improving indoor exploration has been applied to locations such as museums, art galleries, or for virtual search tasks in a physical space (Bederson, 1995;Heller et al, 2016;Rumiński, 2015;Vazquez-Alvarez et al, 2016). Outdoor exploration studies focusing on providing enhanced experiences of events from the past, recreating soundscapes to supplement an existing experience such as that of a safari or providing information about their surroundings to tourists in a meaningful way, have also been conducted in attempts to improve the effectiveness of the auditory information being provided (Boletsis & Chasanidou, 2018;Lawton et al, 2020;Vazquez-Alvarez et al, 2012).…”

Enhancing Art Gallery Visitors' Experiences through Audio Augmented Reality Technology

“…However, multiple users had to move in sync for the audio to begin and stop playing at the same time for each user. This concept was taken a step further by Vazquez-Alvarez et al (2016) in which one layer of sonification was audible to users to attract their attention towards respective artifacts, and a second interactive layer of sound started to play as users would get closer to them. Such applications of audio to enhance users' experiences fit the three dimensions of AAR.…”

An Integrated Mobile Augmented Reality Digital Twin Monitoring System

“…In addition to engineering, it has good applications in medical, education, and entertainment [18]. Multiple modalities can be implemented for improving the AR experience [19]. However, the lack of suitable hardware and software usually constrains AR applications to fixed 2D screens or requires the use of intrusive markers [20].…”