• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.55-62
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• 2005

This paper describes the experiment that investigated the possibility of design and evaluation of the usability of earcon applied to voice menu. The earcon has functions in providing navigational cue in the hierarchical menu, and also can be applied to voice menu for improving the recall rate and the response time. In this experiment, participants identified their location with the help of earcon applied to the voice menu with the various earcon parameters. In detail some participants listened to the good quality sound of voice menu using the structured earcon, and they recalled the location they heard. Other participants listened to the good quality sound of voice menu without earcon, and they recalled the location they heard in the same manner. And the response times were checked through their answers. On analyzing the results, we found the earcon applied to voice menu showed the increase of recalling rate from what they heard during experiment. That is the performance of task was better with earcon applied to voice menu than with voice menu without earcon. In the earcon applied to voice menu test, it showed the accuracy of 92.50%, but in voice menu without earcon test, people could only recall 66.25% among given questions. The response time was reduced from 4.98 sec to 3.85 sec. In addition, this experiment showed the 87.5% of participants preferred the earcon applied to voice menu.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.51-60
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• 2000

Non-verbal sound feedback, called earcon, has been used for portable digital electronic products to give appropriate information for the selected function. This study evaluated usability based on user cognition time, error rate, and subjective satisfaction using 20 male and female subjects. The study compared five major user functions from a portable digital electronic product with currently available earcons and the same functions from the product with the new earcons (suggested by this study) which considered user cognitive characteristics, such as loudness, pitch, melody, and length. For subjective evaluation, the study assessed various earcons by subjective impression of sounds using the seven-point rating scales. Major statistical results indicated that the new earcons significantly reduced user error rates and generally improved user performance functions, such as 'play, off, stop, fast forward, and rewind.'

• Proceedings of the Korea Society of Design Studies Conference
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• 2001.10a
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• pp.26.1-26
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• 2001

• International Journal of Contents
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.29-34
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• 2013

This study attempted to compare usability of auditory interfaces, which is a comprehensive concept that includes safety, utility, effectiveness, and efficiency, in personal computing environments: verbal messages (speech sounds), earcons (musical sounds), and auditory icons (natural sounds). This study hypothesized that verbal messages would offer higher usability than earcons and auditory icons, since the verbal messages are easy to interpret and understand based on semiotic process. In this study, usability was measured by a set of seven items: ability to inform what the program is doing, relevance to visual interfaces, degree of stimulation, degree of understandability, perceived time pressure, clearness of sound outputs, and degrees of satisfaction. Through the experimental research, the results showed that verbal messages provided the highest level of usability. On the contrary, auditory icons showed the lowest level of usability, as they require users to establish new coding schemes, and thus demand more mental effort from users.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.10 no.7
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• pp.470-480
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• 2010

Although e-Learning contents contain audio materials as well as visual materials, research on the design of audio materials has been focused on visual design. If it is considered that non-speech sounds which are a type of audio materials can promptly provide feedbacks of learners' responses and guide learners' learning process, the systemic design of non-speech sounds is needed. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the learners' perceptions toward non-speech sounds contained the e-Learning contents with multidimensional scaling method. For this purpose, the eleven non-speech sounds were selected among non-speech sounds designed Korea Open Courseware. The 66 juniors in A university responded the degree of similarity among 11 non-speech sounds and the learners' perceptions towards non-speech sounds were represented in the multidimensional space. The result shows that learners perceive separately non-speech sounds by the length of non-speech sounds and the atmosphere which is positive or negative.

• 한국HCI학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2007.02a
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• pp.591-597
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• 2007

웨어러블 컴퓨팅의 지속적인 발전과 함께, 이들이 지원하는 기능은 점점 다양화되고 전문화되었다. 하지만 기기의 종류와 기능이 늘어나면서 각 기기의 상태를 확인하는 작업 자체가 복잡하고 불필요한 시간을 소요하기도 한다. 또한 이를 시각 디스플레이에만 의존하면, 디스플레이 크기의 한계와 더불어 시각적인 과부하가 발생할 수 있다. 본 연구에서는 이러한 문제를 극복하기 위해 웨어러블 각 기기의 상태정보 피드백으로서 소리를 이용하였다. 실험의 순서는 먼저 시각정보에 더하여 청각정보를 추가적으로 제시하는 방식의 유용성을 검증한 다음, 기기 특정적인 청각 아이콘(Auditory Icon)의 효과를 확인하였다. 청각정보의 유용성을 확인하는 단계에서는 참가자에게 특정 기기의 위치와 그 상태에 관한 정보를 시각 디스플레이를 통해 제시하면서, 조건에 따라 다양한 형태의 청각 디스플레이를 제시하고 기기 및 상태정보 확인에 소요되는 시간을 측정하였다. 시각디스플레이의 방식은 다양하지만, 본 연구에서는 사람의 몸을 나타내는 그림 위에 기기가 장착된 위치를 붉은 점으로 표시하고, 그 상태를 텍스트로 표시하는 방식(실험 1)과 텍스트를 통해 기기의 종류와 상태를 알려주는 방식(실험 2)을 적용하였다. 기기 확인에 소요되는 반응시간을 기록한 실험결과는 시각디스플레이를 통해서만 제시하는 조건보다 시각디스플레이와 청각디스플레이를 동시에 제시하는 조건에서 나은 수행을 보여주며, 정보의 내용이 일정 범위 내에서 구체적으로 제시될 수록 수행이 증가하는 경향을 보여주고 있다. 이어지는 기기 특정적인 청각 아이콘의 효과를 확인하는 단계에서는, 소리의 높낮이를 통해 기기의 위치를 표현하는 대신, 소리만 듣고 기기가 무엇인가를 알려줄 수 있도록, 참가자 평정을 통해 기기 특정적인 청각 아이콘을 선정하고, 이를 상태정보 디스플레이에 추가하였다. 기기의 수와 제시조건은 앞선 실험과 동일하였으며, 역시 기기 및 상태정보 확인에 소요되는 반응시간을 체크하였다. 실험결과는 이전의 실험과 비슷하게 시각과 청각 디스플레이의 중복제시 조건에서 높은 수행을 보였으며, 청각 아이콘의 사용으로 인한 수행의 증가도 확인할 수 있었다. 실험 2에서는 추가적으로 청각 디스플레이의 내용에 대한 주관적인 평정을 실시 하였는데, 기기 특정적인 청각 아이콘은 참가자에게 편의성, 효용성, 적합성, 확신도에서도 높은 점수를 얻었다. 이러한 결과는 청각 피드백을 이용한 정보의 디스플레이는 착용자의 시선을 자유롭게 함으로써 일상생활의 수행을 높이고, 웨어러블 컴퓨터 디스플레이 크기의 제약을 해결하는 방법이 될 수 있는 동시에 주관적인 사용성 측면에서 발전가능성이 있음을 보여준다.

• 한국HCI학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2007.02a
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• pp.881-886
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• 2007

This study was to develope a vibrotactile display system using windows media player from digital audio signal. WMPlayer10SDK system which was plug-in tool by microsoft windows media player provided its video and audio signal information. The audio signal was tried to be change into vibrotactile display. Audio signal had 4 sections such as 8bit, 16bit, 24bit, and 32bit. Each section was computed its frequency and vibrato scale. And data was transferred to 38400bps network port(COM1) for vibration. Using this system was able to develop the music suit which presented tactile feeling of music beyond sound. Therefore, it may provide cross modal technology for fusion technology of human senses.