Sonification design patterns

Abstract

Most product designers have little or no experience with sonifications. Designers from a range of different domains use a common method called Design Patterns to describe ``solutions to problems in context'' in a way that can be readily understood and reused. Design Patterns may provide a way to communicate sonification research results with product designers and other design communities. I have written a handful of prototype Sonification Design Patterns from papers in the ICAD 2002 proceedings. The papers I selected had clear statements of hypotheses, results to support them, and repeated examples elsewhere in the proceedings. These Patterns are now on the SonificationDesignPatterns site on the WikiWeb and can be edited and added to using any internet browser. The lively development of SonificationDesignPatterns by the ICAD community may help build sonification-specific vocabulary, identify sonification hypotheses, and allow product designers to pick up and apply our research.