References about error and warning sounds in an industrial environment

Question

I'm developping an industrial monitoring interface, and as the user is not always in front of its computer, we need sounds to help the user differenciate different behaviours ( incoming error, incoming info, error gone, big error... ).

For now, there is an existing application (an old one) that does produce some useful sounds... ie a dot matrix printer that makes a lot of noise on a piece of cardboard.

If it were from them, they'd need us to just use this sound. But I think we can do more in 2011. And I need this application in other locations were people are not used to dotmatrix printer sounds :)

so is there anything I can read about this or what do you guys think?

For now I'd go with beeping sounds, more like in some airplanes. I'd use text-to-speech but it's not easy with java as it's not in english (it'd need to be for instance in french/dutch...).

Answer 1

Nikko,

If you're looking for a good, general overview of the use and affect of "auditory icons" and "earcons", this is a good read: http://www.nordiskergonomi.org/nes2007/CD_NES_2007/papers/A19_Fagerlonn.pdf Note that non-beautiful sounds tend to be what is most often used; little is really understood about spearcons (speech), and one sound rarely works across environments.

Not surprisingly there is a lot of discussion on this topic regarding medical settings (as well as aviation), and that is where a lot of the research comes from. See this for a good discussion on effectiveness in medical settings (the recommendations can be generalized to other settings, including manufacturing): http://bja.oxfordjournals.org/content/97/1/12.full.pdf+html Of most interest is the section on controlling the number of alarms.

For a comparison of different approaches, see this: http://www.icad.org/Proceedings/2006/WalkerNance2006.pdf See especially the auditory display type table - spearcons do best. (This is not, however, an analysis in an alarm setting - just general response times. Regardless, worth a look.)

There are numerous libraries out there offering sound sets for free (and for $$) - but you'll struggle to get something quite right. If you're "musically" inclined you could use these guidelines for a touchstone - http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~stephen/earcon_guidelines.shtml They require an understanding of the composition basics, but any article that uses the phrase "sonify an interface" is worth a read.