Towards the Development of Design Guidelines for Short Alert Sounds in a Retail Environment
Abstract: The design and noticeability of alert sounds have been widely researched and reported, furthermore, notification sounds are ubiquitous in both software and hardware product development. In an ongoing research project concerning the retail industry, we aim at designing short alert sounds that only grab attention from one group of customers, while others do not register the alerts: this particular aspect has to our knowledge not yet been studied. To begin establishing design guidelines for such alert sounds, an experiment was conducted where test subjects would experience ordinary clothing store activity including background music and an ecologic soundscape in a virtual reality clothing store, but with added alert sounds. Following several stages of experiment design and sound design development, we tested, specifically, two different types of sound on two differently instructed groups, people aware of the sounds (knowing) and people unaware of the sounds (unknowing). The results disproved assumptions that contextually detached sounds would outperform more subtle, ecologically valid sounds and concluded that people unaware of the sounds tend to ignore them while people aware of them, notice them, while both groups do not seem to be bothered by them. Furthermore, there was no difference between having an early or late amplitude peak in the short sound, and reaction to the sound typically came after two seconds from its onset, regardless of its length. Finally, we measured a decline in attentiveness instead of a growing sensitiveness. These findings suggest that alert sounds can be designed with subtlety and still be noticeable and that customers will not be increasingly annoyed.
AT THIS PAGE YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THE WHOLE ESSAY. (follow the link to the next page)