Auditory Progress Bars Preference Performance, and Aesthetics

Abstract

This paper presents the comparison of Auditory Progress Bars using segmented cello tones to those using sine tones in an on-hold telephony setting. Previous research suggests that for segmented sine tone APBs, there is an interaction between APB type (pitch or duration) and APB polarity (increasing or decreasing). However, for the cello tones, there was a main effect of direction, with increasing APBs resulting in better performance than decreasing APBs, and there was no effect of APB type (pitch or duration). As anticipated, overall performances were very similar for both types of segmented APBs. Contrary to expectations, users gave the cello tone APBs equally low subjective ratings to those they gave the sine tone APBs. Whole-song APBs produced very positive subjective ratings and performances similar to the sine and cello tone APBs.