Steven Goodman
University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
We present a qualitative study with 16 deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) participants examining reactions to smartwatch-based visual + haptic sound feedback designs. In Part 1, we conducted a Wizard-of-Oz (WoZ) evaluation of three smartwatch feedback techniques (visual alone, visual + simple vibration, and visual + tacton) and investigated vibrational patterns (tactons) to portray sound loudness, direction, and identity. In Part 2, we visited three public or semi-public locations where we demonstrated sound feedback on the smartwatch in situ to examine contextual influences and explore sound filtering options. Our findings characterize uses for vibration in multimodal sound awareness, both for push notification and for immediately actionable sound information displayed through vibrational patterns (tactons). In situ experiences caused participants to request sound filtering — particularly to limit haptic feedback — as a method for managing soundscape complexity. Additional concerns arose related to learnability, possibility of distraction, and system trust. Our findings have implications for future portable sound awareness systems.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376406
The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (https://chi2020.acm.org/)