Nonspeech Audio in Helicopter Aviation

Abstract

This report describes the results of a literature study on the use of nonspeech audio in human-machine interaction, especially applied to helicopter aviation. The study focuses on various design philosophies for communicating important states of a machine to its operators through the use of nonspeech sounds. The two most popular sound designs are the so-called auditory icons (natural sounds that have a meaning by association with a real object) and earcons (abstracts sounds whose meaning must be learned). Usability indices such as effectiveness, efficiency and user satisfaction are reviewed for a number of experimental cases. The conclusion is that designs of auditory icons and earcons are not necessarily mutually exclusive. It appears entirely possible to develop sets of artificial sounds that combine the best features of each design approach.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 2003
Accession Number
ADA419911

Entities

People

  • Adrianus J. Houtsma

Organizations

  • United States Army Aeromedical Research Lab

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Acoustic Signals
  • Acquisition
  • Air Force
  • Aircrafts
  • Computers
  • Ear
  • Hearing Loss
  • Helicopters
  • Human Factors Engineering
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Human-Machine Interaction
  • Psychology
  • Recognition
  • Three Dimensional
  • User Interface
  • Warning Systems

Readers

  • Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).
  • Speech Processing/Speech Recognition.
  • Theoretical Analysis.