The most important element of interfaces is obviously the visual element. Thus, visual interfaces have been developed along with technology. However, with the products getting smaller, and the demand for design needs that cannot be satisfied with vision increasing, designers are starting to consider elements other than vision in designing interfaces. In particular, with products smaller than a person's palm being introduced in the market, products that do not display visual information are increasing. So a way to interact using an element other than vision is needed, and this thesis proposes the use of sound as a solution.
The objective of this thesis is to analyze the problems of previous earcon designs, and develop a new earcon prototype in order to show the potential of auditory interface designs.
This thesis proposes a way to utilize earcons for efficient navigation in a product's information architecture - especially hierarchical information architecture. A new earcon prototype that solves the problems of previous earcons and allows more efficient navigation is also developed. The findings discovered in the case studies cart be summarized as follows. First, with a systematically designed earcon, navigating hierarchical information architectures using only sounds is fairly possible. Second, it is possible to check the location of the user in the hierarchical information architecture, using sounds only. Third, a method using an earcon notifying the direction of the movements in the information architecture was proposed, and experimental results show the effectiveness of the method. Finally, adding auditory information to visual information increases the efficiency of the navigation.
This thesis has significant value as groundwork material for exploiting a new research stream in sound design and interface design, and various researches on earcon design can be performed based on this thesis.
