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| Auditory Interface Pioneers: Apple's SonicFinder |
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posted by Editor on Tuesday October 30, @09:34AM
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This discussion of Apple's SonicFinder (RTF) is one of the seminal papers on the use of sound in user interfaces. It presents three arguments for why sound should play an integral role in computer interfaces, and then describes Apple's prototype implementation. Although some of the concepts proposed in the paper surfaced in mainstream desktop operating systems long ago, the original vision took the concept much further. For example, in SonicFinder, every phase of every action had a different sound associated with it, so that no single sound became a distraction. Thus, when dropping an object into the trash can, a simple scraping sound was played continuously while the object was being dragged. Also, the sound varied depending on the type of the object being dragged (applications had a metal sound, folders sounded like paper, files sounded like wood, larger objects had a deeper sounder, while smaller objects were higher etc). The paper also has some interesting ideas on possible future aspects of auditory interfaces that have yet to be implemented.
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Of course, the MacOS 9 Finder has a much simplified version of this, with simple sounds for most UI actions -- in stereo even, panning left/right depending on where the mouse cursor is. Possibly it annoys some people, but I find it unobtrusive and I miss it if it's switched off.
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I worked at Apple when the trackpad was being developed -- did a couple of rounds of user testing on it, and later worked on a prototype for adding sounds to the "tappable" version. (The first version had hardware mouse buttons, subsequent let the user click the pad directly.) I was very favorably impressed by the addition of sounds -- felt much more "real" than without. And I also like the full suite of sounds in OS 9 -- certainly didn't expect to!
Lisa Louise Davis, Usability Specialist, Tangis Corporation,
http://www.tangis.com
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