ABSTRACT
Nonspeech sounds complement speech in the same way as visual icons complement text. For example, icons can present information in a small amount of space compared with text. The classical uses of nonspeech sound can be found in human factors literature. Here, it is used mainly for alarms and warnings or monitoring and status information. Bill Buxton extends these ideas and suggests that encoded messages could be used to present more complex information in sound, and it is this type of auditory feedback that will be considered here. Crossmodal use of the different senses allows the characteristics of one sensory modality to be transformed into stimuli for another sensory modality. Multimodal interaction may also use the different senses to receive different information. One long-running strand of research in the area of auditory and tactile output is in the addition of sound and vibrations to standard graphical displays to improve usability.
