Recommendations to Develop, Distribute and Market Sonification Apps

Abstract

After decades of research, sonification is still rarely adopted in consumer electronics, software and user interfaces. Outside the science and arts scenes the term sonification seems not well known to the public. As a means of science communication, and in order to make software developers, producers of consumer electronics and end users aware of sonification, we developed, distributed, and promoted Tiltification. This smartphone app utilizes sonification to inform users about the tilt angle of their phone, so that they can use it as a torpedo level. In this paper we report on our app development, distribution and promotion strategies and reflect on their success in making the app in particular, and sonification in general, better known to the public. Finally, we give recommendations on how to develop, distribute and market sonification apps. This article is dedicated to research institutions without commercial interests.

Psychoacoustic Music Sound Field Synthesis

“…Mixing Levels is a spirit level sonification based on the Sonic Tilt source code, the open source version of Tiltification [7]. A major criticism about Tiltification was that some users were not able to interpret the sound that they had never heard before [8]. And they were not eager to learn it, because they disliked the sound.…”