Sonifications for digital audio workstations: Reflections on a participatory design approach
Date
2015-07Author
Metatla, Oussama
Bryan-Kinns, Nick
Stockman, Tony
Martin, Fiore
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Methods to engage users in the design process rely predominantly
on visual techniques, such as paper prototypes, to facilitate the expression
and communication of design ideas. The visual nature of
these tools makes them inaccessible to people living with visual
impairments. Additionally, while using visual means to express
ideas for designing graphical interfaces is appropriate, it is harder
to use them to articulate the design of non-visual displays. We applied
a user-centred approach that incorporates various participatory
design techniques to help make the design process accessible
to visually impaired musicians and audio production specialists to
examine how auditory displays, sonification and haptic interaction
can support some of their activities. We describe this approach together
with the resulting designs, and reflect on the benefits and
challenges that we encountered when applying these techniques in the context of designing sonifications to support audio editing.