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Naturalness influences the perceived usability and pleasantness of an interface’s sonic feedback

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Abstract

This study examined the influence of the naturalness of a sonic feedback on the perceived usability and pleasantness of the sounds used in a human-computer interface. The interface was the keyboard of an Automatic Teller Machine. The naturalness of the feedback was manipulated by using different kinds of relationship between a keystroke and its sonic feedback: causal, iconic, and arbitrary. Users were required to rate the naturalness, usability, and pleasantness of the sounds before and after manipulating the interface. Two kinds of interfaces were used: a normally functioning and a defective interface. The results indicated that the different relationships resulted in different levels of naturalness: causal mappings resulted in sounds perceived as natural, and arbitrary mappings in sounds perceived as non-natural, regardless of whether the sounds were recorded or synthesized. Before the subjects manipulated the interface, they rated the natural sounds as more pleasant and useful than the non-natural sounds. Manipulating the interface exaggerated these judgments for the causal and arbitrary mappings. The feedback sounds ruled by an iconic relationship between the user’s gesture and the resulting sounds were overall positively rated, but were sensitive to a potential contamination by the negative feelings created by a defective interface.

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Notes

  1. Note that using a natural or causal relationship may have its own drawbacks—e.g. users having an overly deterministic vision of the feedback model based on prior expectations from the “natural” situation at play.

  2. A discrete feedback occurs for a finite and short amount of time as the result of a user’s action (think of the beeps of a microwave oven); on the contrary, a continuos feedback follows the dynamics of a gesture sustained by the user. The sound produced by a musician bowing a string is a typical example of a continuous interaction.

  3. Note that this interface was only developed for the sake of the experiment. We do not advise to use such an interface in a real ATM.

  4. http://www.sound-ideas.com/6000.html.

  5. We used the cross-synthesis module for Max/MSP developed at Ircam http://imtr.ircam.fr/imtr/Max/MSP_externals.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IRCAM, Paris, France

    Patrick Susini, Nicolas Misdariis, Guillaume Lemaitre & Olivier Houix

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  1. Patrick Susini
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  2. Nicolas Misdariis
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  3. Guillaume Lemaitre
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  4. Olivier Houix
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Correspondence to Patrick Susini.

Additional information

G. Lemaitre is now at the University IUAV of Venice, Italy, research unit interactions.

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Susini, P., Misdariis, N., Lemaitre, G. et al. Naturalness influences the perceived usability and pleasantness of an interface’s sonic feedback. J Multimodal User Interfaces 5, 175–186 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12193-011-0086-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12193-011-0086-0

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