Comments on: Listen to the pattern

By: Josh

Josh — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 02:18:19 +0000

I wonder if a continuos tone would work well. Maybe a flute or recorder.

Also any chance you would post the flash source?

By: Jim

Jim — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 13:29:10 +0000

Great idea.

This might be useful for the visually impaired.

By: Voyager

Voyager — Tue, 29 May 2007 17:44:05 +0000

I don’t find that the sounds enhance the ability to easily grasp the information. If one were to use this as an alternative for visually-impaired people, I agree with Scott Flodin that you need some way to indicate the baseline. Otherwise, you just hear low and high notes without any way to tell that they are above or below the baseline.

By: links for 2007-05-27 — Archive — RD2 Blog

links for 2007-05-27 — Archive — RD2 Blog — Sun, 27 May 2007 03:19:19 +0000

[…] Bella consults » Blog-Archiv » Listen to the pattern Sound Spark (tags: sparkline) […]

By: Scott Flodin

Scott Flodin — Mon, 21 May 2007 18:09:03 +0000

Would it be helpful to have a continuous tone playing quietly in the background representing the baseline/origin/zero of the y-axis? That might help convey which sounds (values) were at, above or below that baseline.

By: gasperix

gasperix — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 09:22:33 +0000

Great idea.
I agree with Stephen Few that the pattern is grasped more quickly visually, but one should experiment with the length of the recording first. I believe that a trained ear can get the idea of time series dynamics more quickly than visually or at least get very close.

By: Jorge Camoes

Jorge Camoes — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 23:23:18 +0000

Just another bit of information:

“Cognitive psychologists have provided myriad information about the effects of sound on memory and about the effects of multiple tasks on attention. From this research, auditory graph investigators have used two principles on the impacts of using sound and vision together for graphed data. One of these principles is that adding another modality (i.e., audition to vision) will result in redundancy in the information, and thus lead to better overall comprehension of graphs. The second principle is that having two modalities will result in divided attention leading to greater cognitive load, and thus to diminished comprehension of graphs. It would be useful for auditory graph researchers to determine in which situations these two contradictory effects manifest themselves. (…)

The results suggest that processing visual and auditory graphs together is a more difficult task than processing either alone.”

Terri L. Bonebright (2005): “A SUGGESTED AGENDA FOR AUDITORY GRAPH RESEARCH”

By: Jorge Camoes

Jorge Camoes — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 22:51:18 +0000

Bella

Time is a property of the auditory system, not of the visual system. As Bertin puts it:

“La perception sonore ne dispose que de deux variables sensibles: la variation des sons et le temps.

Par contre, la perception visuelle dispose de trois variables sensibles: la variation des taches et les deux dimensions du plan, et ceci hors du temps. Les systèmes destinés à l’œil sont d’abord spatiaux et atemporels. D’où leur propriété essentielle: dans un instant de perception, les systèmes linéaires ne nous communiquent qu’un seul son ou signe, tandis que les systèmes spatiaux, dont la graphique, nous communiquent dans le même instant les relations entre trois variables.”

Jacques Bertin, Semiologie Graphique

By: Stephen Few

Stephen Few — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 19:03:31 +0000

Bella,

I certainly can understand your delight in sound, but your claim that the addition of an audio encoding to a visual encoding of time-series values speeds up the process of understanding is not correct. It actually slows it down. I can see the pattern in an instant, because my brain processes the image in a parallel manner, but sounds are processed serially, which takes time. Audio encoding might be useful for people who are visually impaired, but it is not a good replacement nor even a good addition to a visual encoding in the form of a simple graph.

Stephen Few
Perceptual Edge