Jun 27th, 2014 - Category: Sound
The International Community for Auditory Displays (ICAD) has been on my radar since I read an article in Harvard Business Review naming auditory displays as one of the “top 10 breakthrough idea in 2005.” Since then the basic concept has become commonplace even though most people do not realize that it is a studied science. Don’t we all immediately know when a text message arrives versus an email message versus another notification? It is almost Pavlovian.
However, the real promise of this technology stems from its ability to present our complex world in a more cohesive way, especially when combined with 3D Sound. For example, military pilots have relied on auditory displays for decades and there are several other fields that have recently begun to utilize auditory displays such as financial / weather / biomedical data analysis, pattern recognition in “data mining” systems, and data representation from multiple sensors (in a power plant control room for example).
Here is an interesting example of the power of this technique, it is only 12 seconds long, so take a listen…
“Stormy Winter Day with Snow” (from the Broadcasting Auditory Weather Reports) pilot project)