Audio Reminders in the Home Environment

Abstract

In this paper we report an experimental comparison between three different types of audio reminders in the home setting: speech, earcons, and a simple pager sound. We examine how quickly and accurately participants were able to interpret the reminders, and to what extent presentation of the reminders interfered with a digit span background task. In addition, a questionnaire was used to gather user preferences and attitudes towards the different types of reminders. Although participants perform best with speech reminders, there are large inter-subject differences in performance, and over 50% prefer non-speech audio reminders. The implications for the design and application of auditory interfaces for home-based reminder systems are discussed.