NotiFall Ambient Sonification System Using Water

Transcription

1 NotiFall Ambient Sonification System Using Water Alex Harman Hristo Dimitrov Ruisha Ma Sam Whitehouse Yiu Li Paul Worgan Themis Omirou Anne Roudaut Abstract This paper presents NotiFall, an experimental prototype of an ambient auditory notification system. NotiFall uses the sound of falling water to subtly notify users for nonurgent matters, such as weather alerts or s in an unobtrusive manner. These sounds are controlled and altered in order to convey a wider range of auditory cues and information. Traditionally, ambient notification systems are application specific and are limited in the way they can transmit information. In comparison, NotiFall is easily programmable, suitable for a wide range of home and work environments, and makes use of both visual and audio cues in order to impart information. Author Keywords Ambient Notifications, Auditory, Water. Submitted to Late Breaking Work CHI 2016 ACM Classification Keywords H5.2 [Information interfaces and presentation]: User Interfaces. Introduction Modern devices often demand attention in the form of disruptive notifications utilizing a mixture of flashing and beeping. s, social networking sites and other communications are responsible for a cacophony of noise constantly demanding the immediate action of users. 1

2 Most of these notifications are not truly urgent, yet they all demand consideration with the same levels of criticality. Weiser s designing calm technology [9] discusses the importance of technology, which is designed to inform, and encalm, something most digital notification systems struggle to reconcile. Notifall utilizes water falling from a certain height into a reservoir, generating a sound. Adjustments are made to the sound of the falling water in order to notify the user. This change is subtle enough not to immediately distract a user from a task they may currently be attending to, but is noticeable enough to eventually draw attention. NotiFall can be incorporated into living spaces, functioning both as a fountain and a notification system. When in notification mode, the flow of the water is regulated so that it hits the drums whereas when in fountain mode the water does not fall onto the drums but in the water underneath. Additionally, the volume and qualities of the sound used to herald a notification is easy to adjust, catering to different levels of user alertness. In this paper we present our initial exploration of this ambient system and the results of a preliminary study. Walkthrough Figure 1 illustrates our smart home application. When the energy consumption in a home has reached a certain threshold, NotiFall will turn on. On reaching a higher threshold, NotiFall changes the pitch of the sound. This noise is not enough to wake a sleeping user, but is enough to alert an awake user that the energy consumption of the house has changed. When the energy consumption drops below a certain threshold, e.g. at night, NotiFall will turn off. Figure 1: The user turns on electrical devices around the house. 2. NotiFall begins making noise to indicate that energy is being used. 3/4. This noise ensures that users are kept aware of their energy consumption. 5/6. The user is more careful with their energy consumption and turns the devices off. NotiFall produces different levels of noise depending on the current energy consumption. Related work Notifall draws on work in sonification and visualisation systems. Most systems focus on the direct interaction between a user and the system, neglecting the calm technology approach [9]. Sonification systems aim to 2

3 convey digital information using our inherent auditory perceptions skills. Examples of calm technology sonification systems include "ShareMon" [2], a system that informs users regarding file-sharing events through background sound. Another interactive system, called "Birds Whispering" [4], uses the position of people within an office to inform workers about activities on the premises. "Mediated Intuition" [5] is an unobtrusive system, informing people within a room of the current printer queue through sonification. "Flunda" [1] is another unobtrusive system informing people within a house about other people in the house, for example how long they've been inside, through smart usage of sound generated with falling water. However, Flunda [1] can only vary the flow rate of the water and thus has limited control over the pitch and duration of the generated sound. An ambient display example is the Information Percolator [7], which uses rising bubbles as pixels in a display. The authors speculated on the use of the sound the bubbles produced as a part of the display, but did not actively explore this avenue. Ishihara et al. [8] present a prototype system to visualise domestic electricity usage as a stream of water from a tap but do not explore sonification of data. We present Notifall, a system in which the generated sound can be modified by both controlling the flow rate of the falling water as well as the surface that the water falls onto. We selected drum like surfaces where varying size, material and surface tension enables richer audible information for the end user. Implementation Our NotiFall prototype consists of a series of water streams, all falling from a configurable height into a reservoir. Each stream is individually controlled and produces a different sound on impact with different drums. Our implementation was created using the PumpSpark Fountain Development Kit [3], consisting of eight pumps attached to a central controller, which itself is attached via a serial connection to an Arduino Uno. Figure 2: Prototype NotiFall with four pumps and drums. In order to change the sound of the streams we considered 1) changing the water velocities and 2) placing different objects in the way of the flow. Of these options, we chose option 2); using drum-like tensioned surfaces as they can produce a range of similar yet distinguishable sounds by varying the size of the drum and material of the skin. 3

4 The drums are made of thin, flexible, plastic sheets stretched over plastic containers and attached close to the waterline of the reservoirs. The proximity of the drums reduced splashing and additionally ensures the sound of the water hitting the drum was dominant over the sound of the water falling into the reservoir. In order for the drums to make adequate sound, we found the falling water had to split from a single continuous stream into multiple droplets, with each drop acting as a single hit on the drum. This placed a lower bound on the height the water fell for a given water flow, which was 25cm. The user can customize this height to create personalized auditory effects. Applications We created an example application for NotiFall; an ambient sonification display of energy use in a smart home, as seen in Figure 3, complete with room-by-room controllable representations of lighting, an oven and air conditioning. Each room was connected to a PumpSpark pump, and each pump dropped water onto a unique drum, see Figure 2. As the house consumes more electricity, NotiFall makes itself more noticeable by changing the intensity of the falling water in an effort to inform the homeowner about their electricity usage. Several distinguishable variations of sound were created for this application, including one which enabled NotiFall to play a drumbeat that became faster and more complex with increased electricity consumption. Additional applications of NotiFall include being used to provide warnings whenever adverse weather is predicted. Other possibilities include informing users about people entering the building, similar to the Flunda project [1]. The system could also be used within public areas for an interactive display, utilising depth cameras. Figure 3: A smart house with appliances. The energy use is being monitored and triggers NotiFall. (Upper left: lights, Upper right: a fan, Bottom left: a LCD screen) Preliminary User study To evaluate the distinguishability of the generated sounds of our system, a qualitative study was undertaken. The study was conducted in the lab and Notifall was placed in the middle of the room. 10 participants (7 male and 3 female) were introduced to the concept of Notifall, and were shown the specific application of the smart home model. The participants interacted with the system for a few minutes, by changing the flow of water using switches placed in the smart house model (Figure 3). We asked several 4

5 questions in order to determine whether the variety of sounds that the system can provide can be memorable, noticeable and moreover different from each other. The first question was about the distinguishability of the noises generated by the various drums. Each participant was within a 2-3 meter radius from the system, with the freedom to enable any of the appliances in the smart house model. All the participants were able to clearly differentiate between the noises and relate each noise to a specific appliance. In order to test how intrusive the generated sounds were, we asked participants how likely are you to get up from bed and turn off an electric appliance, because you can hear the NotiFall sound? The response to this question was divided in two, with half the respondents stating they would not take action even if they hear it. We attribute this to the non-urgent nature of our device. One solution could be to gradually increase the volume of the NotiFall as the notification is left unattended, gradually bringing the user s attention to the situation. Regarding the practicality of our system, 7 out of 10 raised concerns about having a water-based device in the home, with specific worries about water splashing. Alleviating this concern would require further development in order to have a compact, unobtrusive device. Having a concealed and sound amplifying water tank could prove to be a good solution. Alternatively, NotiFall could mount on an existing water-based houseware such as a fish tank or garden fountain. 8 out of 10 people expressed their liking for NotiFall, saying they would also find the visual cues of the device pleasing and interesting. These visual cues could be enhanced by using an elaborate combination of the NotiFall and lighting. Conclusion and Future work We have presented an ambient notification system, building upon on Weiser s calm technology vision, using noise created by falling water to notify a user about changes in real time. We presented a sample application for energy awareness where varying sounds are generated corresponding to the consumption of domestic power. The NotiFall can help users to understand and reduce their energy consumption. In the future we want to explore other configurations of water tanks, as well as different objects as obstacles placed in the stream in order to generate different type of sounds. We also want to investigate the memorability of each sound as well at the sense of urgency that each sound provides. We will do this by changing the rate of which the water is falling as well as modulating the times that a pump is on and off in order to create sound effects with varied intensity and frequency. Other possibilities will be to use liquids with different viscosities that might produce lower or higher pitches, or simply including light effects in the falling water to further enhance the notification potential in terms of visual information. References 1. Bakker, S. van den Berg R., Pijnappel S. van den Hoven E Sounds Like Home: Sonification and Physical Interaction. In Proceedings of ISon Cohen, J Kirk here: : Using Genre Sounds To Monitor Background Activity. In INTERACT '93 and CHI '93 Conference Companion on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 93)

6 3. Dietz P., Reyes G., Kim, D The PumpSpark Fountain Development Kit. In Proceedings of the 2014 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS '14) Eggen b., van Mensvoort, k Making Sense of What Is Going on Around : Designing Environmental Awareness Information Displays. In Awareness Systems Eggen, b., Van Mensvoort, k., Menting, D., Vegt, E., Widdershoven W., Zimmermann, R Soundscapes at Workspace Zero Design Explorations into the Use of Sound in a Shared Environment. In Proceedings of Pervasive Computing. 6. Froehlich. J Promoting Energy Efficient Behaviors in the Home through Feedback: The Role of Human-Computer Interaction. In HCIC 09 Workshop. 7. Heiner, J., Hudson S., Tanaka, K The Information Percolator: Ambient Information Display in a Decorative Object. In Proceedings of UIST ' Ishihara, Y., Ishihara, M., Hirayama F., Yasukawa, K Domestic Electricity Consumption Visualized as Flowing Tap Water to Raise the Feeling of Waste. In Proceedings of HCI International 2015 Extended Abstracts Weiser M., Seely Brown, J Designing Calm Technology. PowerGrid Journal, v m 6