Detailed Work Plan: Audio feedback in predictive HCI methods

The aim of this short term mission is to work at the Medialogy Department of the Aalborg University in Copenhagen to a project with Prof. Stefania Serafin. The work that we would like to do together is related to an ongoing project about a well known HCI predictive model in an audio perspective: the Fitts’ model has been analyzed providing different audio interactive displays and interfaces in which the user had to perform simple tuning tasks. In fact, frequency tuning is the direct transposition of spatial aiming if one accepts the notion of auditory vs. visual objecthood given by Kubovy [2]. Sliding/tuning gestures carry many similarities in different contexts the musical and the interaction one. The metaphor used was a clear Fitts task, even if the studies of velocity profiles can still lead to many expressive considerations. Several inferfaces has been already used ( a Tehremin, a sliding interface, a webcam inferface) and we want to focus our research on one of them: the croaker, a digital intonarumori. In particular we would like to test it with everyday sound as feedback and in a navigation task. In fact, the action of steering a path within a corridor, as used in some Fitts-like experiments [1], can be linked to the metaphor of a violinist trying to ”balance” her sound. Such situation is represented by the so-called ”Schelleng diagram” [3]. The Schelleng diagram indicates the theoretical minimum and maximum bow force as a function of the relative bow position along the string. Between the bow-force limits, Helmholtz motion is established. Helmholtz motion arises from the stick-slip interaction between bow and string, and is characterized by a single corner travelling back and forth on the string under an approximately parabolic envelope. While the corner is between the bow and the nut or finger, the string is sticking to the bow. When the corner is on the shorter part of its journey, between the bow and the bridge, the string is slipping under the bow. The idea behind this experiment is to reformulate equilibrium in continuous interaction as navigation within the corridor of playability in Schellengs plots, using the croaker interface.