Question

Suggest ideas for an interface, which uses the properties of sound effectively.

Answer 1

There was majority of Computer based interfaces which we encounter in our daily in our life and almost all of them are based on visual medium such as pictures or graphics etc. We interact with the computer through these pictures and graphics. However there is an another medium that is frequently used for the interface design in the computers which is sound. Sound has a lot of properties which can be leveraged to design an interface for the computers to let the human interact with computers.

Sound can be used as both input and output function in the interface design. We can have audio alerts in which the computer or the system emits out some kind of sound in the form of alert to notify the user about any event triggered in the system.

Sound can also be used to provide the information from the system to the user in regards to current system status or the query result. This can be implemented in the system as a speech output.

sound can also be used as an input device in a human computer interaction which is currently used in large scale as we know as voice recognition. It's a technology which is continuously improving day by day. It is proving to be very useful for those who are visually impaired and for whom visual interfaces is not an option.

Currently we are approaching a world where every instruction of an automated home is made by voice commands but succeeding that, one of the innovative method for computer interaction with the sound can be the navigation on the computer where all the clicks and all other navigations among windows and tabs can be made voice based. Through the help of this we can also navigate inside a browser with the help of voice command instead of using a mouse. MS can enable the visually impaired people to use computer in a better way and will help empowering them.