S. A. Brewster

Publication List Details

Period

1993 - 2008

Number

245

Co-Authors

Multimodal collaborative handwriting training for visually-impaired people (2008)

Plimmer, B., Crossan, A., Brewster, S.A., Blagojevic, R.

"McSig" is a multimodal teaching and learning environ-ment for visually-impaired students to learn character shapes, handwriting and signatures collaboratively with their teachers. It combines haptic...

Tac-tiles: multimodal pie charts for visually impaired users (2006)

Wall, S.A., Brewster, S.A.

Tac-tiles is an accessible interface that allows visually impaired users to browse graphical information using tactile and audio feedback. The system uses a graphics tablet which is augmented with a...

Crossmodal spatial location: initial experiments (2006)

Hoggan, E., Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes an alternative form of interaction for mobile devices using crossmodal output. The aim of our work is to investigate the equivalence of audio and tactile displays so that the...

SoundBar: exploiting multiple views in multimodal graph browsing (2006)

McGookin, D.K., Brewster, S.A.

In this paper we discuss why access to mathematical graphs is problematic for visually impaired people. By a review of graph understanding theory and interviews with visually impaired users, we...

Tactile crescendos and sforzandos: applying musical techniques to tactile icon design (2006)

Brown, L.M., Brewster, S.A., Purchase, H.C.

Tactile icons (Tactons) are structured vibrotactile messages which can be used for non visual information display. Information is encoded in Tactons by manipulating vibrotactile parameters. This...

Olfoto: designing a smell-based interaction (2006)

Brewster, S.A., McGookin, D.K., Miller, C.A.

We present a study into the use of smell for searching digi-tal photo collections. Many people now have large photo libraries on their computers and effective search tools are needed. Smell has a...

Multidimensional tactons for non-visual information presentation in mobile devices (2006)

Brown, L.M., Brewster, S.A., Purchase, H.C.

Tactons are structured vibrotactile messages which can be used for non-visual information presentation when visual displays are limited, unavailable or inappropriate, such as in mobile phones and...

Effects of feedback, mobility and index of difficulty on deictic spatial audio target acquisition in the horizontal plane (2006)

Marentakis, G.N., Brewster, S.A.

We present the results of an empirical study investigating the effect of feedback, mobility and index of difficulty on a deictic spatial audio target acquisition task in the horizontal plane in front...

Feeling what you hear: tactile feedback for navigation of audio graphs (2006)

Wall, S., Brewster, S.A.

Access to digitally stored numerical data is currently very limited for sight impaired people. Graphs and visualizations are often used to analyze relationships between numerical data, but the...

MultiVis: improving access to visualisations for visually impaired people (2006)

McGookin, D.K., Brewster, S.A.

This paper illustrates work undertaken on the MultiVis project to allow visually impaired users both to construct and browse mathematical graphs effectively. We start by discussing the need for such...

Non-visual overviews of complex data sets (2006)

Kildal, J., Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes the design and preliminary testing of an interface to obtain overview information from complex numerical data tables non-visually, which is something that cannot be done with...

Two-handed navigation in a haptic virtual environment (2006)

Crossan, A., Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes the initial results from a study looking at a two-handed interaction paradigm for tactile navigation for blind and visually impaired users. Participants were set the task of...

Crossmodal icons for information display (2006)

Hoggan, E.E., Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes a novel form of display using crossmodal output. A crossmodal icon is an abstract icon that can be instantiated in one of two equivalent forms (auditory or tactile). These can be...

The design and evaluation of a sonically enhanced tool palette (2005)

Brewster, S.A., Clarke, C.

This paper describes an experiment to investigate the effectiveness of adding sound to tool palettes. Palettes have usability problems because users need to see the information they present, but they...

Sonically-enhanced widgets: comments on Brewster and Clarke, ICAD 1997 (2005)

Brewster, S.A.

This paper presents a review of the research surrounding the paper “The Design and Evaluation of a Sonically Enhanced Tool Palette” by Brewster and Clarke from ICAD 1997. A historical perspective...

An investigation into the use of tactons to present progress information (2005)

Brewster, S.A., King, A.

This paper presents an initial investigation into the use of Tactons, or tactile icons, to present progress information in desktop human-computer interfaces. Progress bars are very common in a wide...

The effect of age and font size on reading text on handheld computers (2005)

Darroch, I., Goodman, J., Brewster, S.A., Gray, P.D.

Though there have been many studies of computer based text reading, only a few have considered the small screens of handheld computers. This paper presents an investigation into the effect of varying...

The design and evaluation of a vibrotactile progress bar (2005)

Brewster, S.A., King, A.

We present an investigation into the use of Tactons to present progress information. Progress bars are common but must compete for screen space and visual attention with other visual tasks. We...

A first investigation into the effectiveness of Tactons (2005)

Brown, L.M., Brewster, S.A., Purchase, H.C.

This paper reports two experiments relating to the design of Tactons (or tactile icons). The first experiment investigated perception of vibro-tactile "roughness" (created using amplitude modulated...

Gait phase effects in mobile interaction (2005)

Crossan, A., Murray-Smith, R., Brewster, S.A., Kelly, J., Musizza, B.

One problem evaluating mobile and wearable devices is that they are used in mobile settings, making it hard to collect usability data. We present a study of tap-based selection of on-screen targets...

Effects of reproduction equipment on interaction with a spatial audio interface (2005)

Marentakis, G., Brewster, S.A.

Spatial audio displays have been criticized because the use of headphones may isolate users from their real world audio environment. In this paper we study the effects of three types of audio...

A comparison of feedback cues for enhancing pointing efficiency in interaction with spatial audio displays (2005)

Marentakis, G., Brewster, S.A.

An empirical study that compared six different feedback cue types to enhance pointing efficiency in deictic spatial audio displays is presented. Participants were asked to select a sound using a...

A first investigation into the effectiveness of Tactons (2005)

Brown, L. M., Brewster, S. A., Purchase, H. C.

This paper reports two experiments relating to the design of Tactons (or tactile icons). The first experiment investigated perception of vibro-tactile "roughness" (created using amplitude modulated...

How can we best use landmarks to support older people in navigation? (2005)

J. Goodman, S. A. Brewster, P. Gray

This paper builds on such work by examining the role of age and of di#erent ways of presenting navigation information on the e#ectiveness of landmark-based systems. To do this, it uses a set of...

Understanding concurrent earcons: applying auditory scene analysis principles to concurrent earcon recognition (2004)

McGookin, D.K., Brewster, S.A.

Two investigations into the identification of concurrently presented, structured sounds, called earcons were carried out. One of the experiments investigated how varying the number of concurrently...

Study on gestural interaction with a 3D audio display (2004)

Marentakis, G., Brewster, S.A.

The study reported here investigates the design and evaluation of a gesture-controlled, spatially-arranged auditory user interface for a mobile computer. Such an interface may provide a solution to...

Tactons: structured tactile messages for non-visual information display (2004)

Brewster, S.A., Brown, L.M.

Tactile displays are now becoming available in a form that can be easily used in a user interface. This paper describes a new form of tactile output. Tactons, or tactile icons, are structured,...

Non-visual information display using tactons (2004)

Brewster, S.A., Brown, L.M.

This paper describes a novel form of display using tactile output. Tactons, or tactile icons, are structured tactile messages that can be used to communicate message to users non visually. A range of...

Evaluation of multimodal graphs for blind people (2003)

Yu, W., Brewster, S.A.

This paper introduces the development of a multimodal data visualisation system and its evaluations. This system is designed to improve blind and visually impaired peoples access to graphs and...

Drawing by ear: interpreting sonified line graphs (2003)

Brown, L.M., Brewster, S.A.

The research presented here describes a pilot study into the interpretation of sonified line graphs containing two data series. The experiment aimed to discover the level of accuracy with which...

Design guidelines for audio presentation of graphs and tables (2003)

Brown, L.M., Brewster, S.A., Ramloll, S.A., Burton, R., Riedel, B.

Audio can be used to make visualisations accessible to blind and visually impaired people. The MultiVis Project has carried out research into suitable methods for presenting graphs and tables to...

Multimodal 'eyes-free' interaction techniques for wearable devices (2003)

Brewster, S.A., Lumsden, J., Bell, M., Hall, M., Tasker, S.

Mobile and wearable computers present input/output prob-lems due to limited screen space and interaction techniques. When mobile, users typically focus their visual attention on navigating their...

Assessing haptic properties for data representation (2003)

Wall, S.A., Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes the results of a series of forced choice design experiments investigating the discrimination of material properties using a PHANToM haptic device. Research has shown that the...

Visualization tools for blind people using multiple modalities (2002)

Brewster, S.A.

Purpose: There are many problems when blind people need to access visualizations such as graphs and tables. Current speech or raised-paper technology does not provide a good solution. Our approach is...

Overcoming the lack of screen space on mobile computers (2002)

Brewster, S.A.

One difficulty for interface design on mobile computers is lack of screen space caused by their small size. This paper describes a small pilot study and two formal experiments that investigate the...

The challenges of mobile devices for human computer interaction (editorial for special edition) (2002)

Dunlop, M.D., Brewster, S.A.

Current mobile computing devices such as palmtop computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and mobile phones, and future devices such as Bluetooth and GSM enabled cameras, and music players have...

The challenges of mobile devices for human computer interaction (editorial for special edition) (2002)

Dunlop, M.D., Brewster, S.A.

Current mobile computing devices such as palmtop computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and mobile phones, and future devices such as Bluetooth and GSM enabled cameras, and music players have...

DOLPHIN: the design and initial evaluation of multimodal focus and context (2002)

McGookin, D.K., Brewster, S.A.

In this paper we describe a new focus and context visualisation technique called multimodal focus and context. This technique uses a hybrid visual and spatialised audio display space to overcome the...

Comparing two haptic interfaces for multimodal graph rendering (2002)

Yu, W., Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes the evaluation of two multimodal interfaces designed to provide visually impaired people with access to various types of graphs. The interfaces consist of audio and haptics which...

A generic approach for augmenting tactile diagrams with spatial non-speech sounds (2002)

Ramloll, R., Brewster, S.A.

Blind or visually impaired users typically access diagrams in the tactile medium. This paper describes TouchMelody, a system designed for augmenting such existing diagrams with 3D spatial auditory...

Web-based multimodal graphs for visually impaired people (2002)

Yu, W., Reid, D., Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes the development and evaluation of Web-based multimodal graphs designed for visually impaired and blind people. The information in the graphs is conveyed to visually impaired...

Multimodal virtual reality versus printed medium in visualization for blind people (2002)

Yu, W., Brewster, S.A.

In this paper, we describe a study comparing the strengths of a multimodal Virtual Reality (VR) interface against traditional tactile diagrams in conveying information to visually impaired and blind...

Guidelines for the design of haptic widgets (2002)

Oakley, I., Adams, A., Brewster, S.A., Gray, P.D.

Haptic feedback has been shown to improve user performance in Graphical User Interface (GUI) targeting tasks in a number of studies. These studies have typically focused on interactions with...

Multi-session VR medical training - The HOPS simulator (2002)

Crossan, A., Brewster, S.A., Reid, S., Mellor, D.

Virtual reality medical simulators offer the potential to provide a training environment for a novice doctor to practice skills without risk to patients. However, these simulators must be shown to...

An environment for studying the impact of spatialising sonified graphs on data comprehension (2002)

Ramloll, R., Brewster, S.A.

We describe AudioCave, an environment for exploring the impact of spatialising sonified graphs on a set of numerical data comprehension tasks. Its design builds on findings regarding the...

The challenges of mobile devices for human computer interaction (editorial for special edition) (2002)

Dunlop, M.D., Brewster, S.A.

Current mobile computing devices such as palmtop computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and mobile phones, and future devices such as Bluetooth and GSM enabled cameras, and music players have...

Exploring computer-generated line graphs through virtual touch (2001)

Yu, W., Ramloll, R., Brewster, S.A., Riedel, B.

This paper describes the development and evaluation of a haptic interface designed to provide access to line graphs for blind or visually impaired people. Computer-generated line graphs can be felt...

Haptic graphs for blind computer users (2001)

Yu, W., Ramloll, R., Brewster, S.A.

In this paper we discuss the design of computer-based haptic graphs for blind and visually impaired people with the support of our preliminary experimental results. Since visual impairment makes data...

Communicating with feeling (2001)

Oakley, I., Brewster, S.A., Gray, P.D.

Communication between users in shared editors takes place in a deprived environment - distributed users find it difficult to communicate. While many solutions to the problems this causes have been...

A toolkit of mechanism and context independent widgets (2001)

Crease, M., Gray, P., Brewster, S.A.

Most human-computer interfaces are designed to run on a static platform (e.g. a workstation with a monitor) in a static environment (e.g. an office). However, with mobile devices becoming ubiquitous...

The effective combination of haptic and auditory textural information (2001)

McGee, M.R., Gray, P.D., Brewster, S.A.

With the increasing availability and quality of auditory and haptic means of interaction, it is not unusual to incorporate many modalities in interfaces rather than the purely visual. The user can be...

Haptic perception of virtual roughness (2001)

McGee, M.R., Gray, P.D., Brewster, S.A.

The texture of a virtual surface can both increase the sense of realism of an object as well as convey information about object identity, type, location, function, and so on. It is crucial therefore...

Solving multi-target haptic problems in menu interaction (2001)

Oakley, I., Brewster, S.A., Gray, P.D.

While haptic feedback has been shown to enhance user performance and satisfaction in single target interactions in desktop user interfaces, it is not clear whether this will hold for more realistic,...

Using non-speech sounds to improve access to 2D tabular numerical information for visually impaired users (2001)

Ramloll, R., Yu, W., Riedel, B., Brewster, S.A.

We investigated two solutions for numerical (2D) tabular data discovery and overview for visually impaired and blind users. One involved accessing information in tables (26 rows x 10 columns...

Diary in the sky: A spatial audio display for a mobile calendar (2001)

Walker, A., Brewster, S.A., McGookin, D., Ng, A.

We present a spatial audio display technique that overcomes the presentation rate bottleneck of traditional monaural audio displays. Our compact speech display works by encoding message semantics...

"Sitting too close to the screen can be bad for your ears": A study of audio-visual location discrepancy detection under different visual projections (2001)

Walker, A., Brewster, S.A.

In this work, we look at the perception of event locality under conditions of disparate audio and visual cues. We address an aspect of the so called “ventriloquism effect” relevant for...

Presenting dynamic information on mobile computers (2000)

Brewster, S.A., Murray, R.

A problem with mobile computing devices is the output of dynamic information owing to their small screens. This paper describes an experiment to investigate the use of non-speech sounds to present...

Spatial audio in small display screen devices (2000)

Walker, A., Brewster, S.A.

Our work addresses the problem of (visual) clutter in mobile device interfaces. The solution we propose involves the translation of technique-from the graphical to the audio domain-for expliting...

Human computer interaction with mobile devices (editorial for special edition) (2000)

Brewster, S.A., Dunlop, M.D.

The second international workshop on human-computer interaction with mobile devices took place on 30th August,1999 as part of the IFIP INTERACT '99 conference held in Edinburgh, UK. We had over 60...

Human computer interaction with mobile devices (editorial for special edition) (2000)

Brewster, S.A., Dunlop, M.D.

The second international workshop on human-computer interaction with mobile devices took place on 30th August,1999 as part of the IFIP INTERACT '99 conference held in Edinburgh, UK. We had over 60...

Putting the feel in ’look and feel‘ (2000)

Oakley, I., McGee, M.R., Brewster, S.A., Gray, P.D.

Haptic devices are now commercially available and thus touch has become a potentially realistic solution to a variety of interaction design challenges. We report on an investigation of the use of...

Designing non-speech sounds to support navigation in mobile phone menus (2000)

Leplatre, G., Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes a framework for integrating non-speech audio to hierarchical menu structures where the visual feedback is limited. In the first part of this paper, emphasis is put on how to...

Caring, sharing widgets: a toolkit of sensitive widgets (2000)

Crease, M., Brewster, S.A., Gray, P.

Although most of us communicate using multiple sensory modalities in our lives, and many of our computers are similarly capable of multi-modal interaction, most human-computer interaction is...

Haptic feedback in the training of veterinary students (2000)

Brewster, S.A., Montgomery Masters, M., Glendye, A., Kriz, N., Reid, S.

This paper reports on an initial study into the use of haptic (or touch) technology in the training of veterinary students. One major problem faced in veterinary education is that animals can be...

Human computer interaction with mobile devices (editorial for special edition) (2000)

Brewster, S.A., Dunlop, M.D.

The second international workshop on human-computer interaction with mobile devices took place on 30th August,1999 as part of the IFIP INTERACT '99 conference held in Edinburgh, UK. We had over 60...

Correcting menu usability problems with sound (1999)

Brewster, S.A, Crease, M.G.

Future human-computer interfaces will use more than just graphical output to display information. In this paper we suggest that sound and graphics together can be used to improve interaction. We...

Maximising screen-space on mobile computing devices (1999)

Brewster, S.A, Cryer, P.G.

One major problem with mobile computing devices is lack of screen space. One way to overcome this is to reduce the size of the graphical components on screen and present information in sound. This...

The design of sonically-enhanced widgets (1998)

Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes the design of user-interface widgets that include non-speech sound. Previous research has shown that the addition of sound can improve the usability of human–computer...

Using non-speech sounds to provide navigation cues (1998)

Brewster, S.A.

This article describes 3 experiments that investigate the possibiity of using structured nonspeech audio messages called earcons to provide navigational cues in a menu hierarchy. A hierarchy of 27...

Using compound earcons to represent hierarchies (1998)

Brewster, S.A., Capriotti, A., Hall, C.V.

Previous research on non-speech audio messages called earcons showed that they could provide powerful navigation cues in menu hierarchies. This work used hierarchical earcons. In this paper we...

Using earcons to improve the usability of tool palettes (1998)

Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes an experiment to investigate the effectiveness of adding sound to tool palettes. Palette shave usability problems because users need to see the information they present but they...

Using earcons to improve the usability of a graphics package (1998)

Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes how non–speech sounds can be used to improve the usability of a graphics package. Sound was specifically used to aid problems with tool palettes and finding the current mouse...

Perspectives on the design of musical auditory interfaces (1998)

Leplatre, G., Brewster, S.A.

This paper addresses the issue of music as a communication medium in auditory human-computer interfaces. So far, psychoacoustics has had a great influence on the development of auditory interfaces,...

Using non-speech sound to overcome information overload (1997)

Brewster, S.A.

With ever increasing amounts of visual information to take in when interacting with computers, users can become overloaded. One reason is that computers communicate solely by graphical output. This...

Navigating telephone-based interfaces with earcons (1997)

Brewster, S.A.

Non-speech audio messages called earcons can provide powerful navigation cues in menu hierarchies. However, previous research on earcons has not addressed the particular problems of menus in...

Earcons as a method of providing navigational cues in a menu hierarchy (1996)

Brewster, S.A., Kortekangas, A.

We describe an experiment to discover if structured audio messages, earcons, could provide navigational cues in a menu hierarchy. A hierarchy of 27 nodes and four levels was created with sounds for...

Enhancing scanning input with non-speech sounds (1996)

Brewster, S.A., Kortekangas, A.

This paper proposed the addition of non-speech sounds to aid people who use scanning as their method of input. Scanning input is a temporal task; users have to press a switch when a cursor is over...

Sonically enhanced interface toolkit (1996)

Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes an on-going research project investigating the design of a user-interface toolkit composed of sonically enhanced widgets. The motivation for this work is the same that motivated...

An Audio Glanmce at Syntactic Structure Based on Spoken Form (1996)

R. D. Stevens, P. C. Wright, S. A. Brewster

An example of where and how to use non-speech sounds in an interface is described. The role of the sound is to provide an overview or glance for a blind person reading mathematics by listening. The...

Parallel earcons: reducing the length of audio messages (1995)

Brewster, S.A., Wright, P.C., Edwards, A.D.N.

This paper describes a method of presenting structured audio messages, earcons, in parallel so that they take less time to play and can better keep pace with interactions in a human-computer...

The design and evaluation of an auditory-enhanced scrollbar (1994)

Brewster, S.A., Wright, P.C., Edwards, A.D.N.

A structured method is described for the analysis of interactions to identify situations where hidden information may exist and where non-speech sound might be used to overcome the associated...

Design and Evaluation of an Auditory Glance at Algebra for Blind Readers (1994)

Stevens Brewster, R. D. Stevens, S. A. Brewster, P. C. Wright

An overview or glance is important in planning the reading process. Such a highlevel view is not possible for a blind person when reading by listening. This paper describes the sonification of...

An evaluation of earcons for use in auditory human-computer interfaces (1993)

Brewster, S.A., Wright, P.C., Edwards, A.D.N.

An evaluation of earcons was carried out to seee whether they are an effective means of communicating information in sound. An initial experiment showed that earcons were better than unstructured...

Drawing by ear: interpreting sonified line graphs

Brown, L.M., Brewster, S.A.

The research presented here describes a pilot study into the interpretation of sonified line graphs containing two data series. The experiment aimed to discover the level of accuracy with which...

Design guidelines for audio presentation of graphs and tables

Brown, L.M., Brewster, S.A., Ramloll, S.A., Burton, R., Riedel, B.

Audio can be used to make visualisations accessible to blind and visually impaired people. The MultiVis Project has carried out research into suitable methods for presenting graphs and tables to...

Exploring computer-generated line graphs through virtual touch

Yu, W., Ramloll, R., Brewster, S.A., Riedel, B.

This paper describes the development and evaluation of a haptic interface designed to provide access to line graphs for blind or visually impaired people. Computer-generated line graphs can be felt...

Comparing two haptic interfaces for multimodal graph rendering

Yu, W., Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes the evaluation of two multimodal interfaces designed to provide visually impaired people with access to various types of graphs. The interfaces consist of audio and haptics which...

Putting the feel in ’look and feel‘

Oakley, I., McGee, M.R., Brewster, S.A., Gray, P.D.

Haptic devices are now commercially available and thus touch has become a potentially realistic solution to a variety of interaction design challenges. We report on an investigation of the use of...

Spatial audio in small display screen devices

Walker, A., Brewster, S.A.

Our work addresses the problem of (visual) clutter in mobile device interfaces. The solution we propose involves the translation of technique-from the graphical to the audio domain-for expliting...

Presenting dynamic information on mobile computers

Brewster, S.A., Murray, R.

A problem with mobile computing devices is the output of dynamic information owing to their small screens. This paper describes an experiment to investigate the use of non-speech sounds to present...

DOLPHIN: the design and initial evaluation of multimodal focus and context

McGookin, D.K., Brewster, S.A.

In this paper we describe a new focus and context visualisation technique called multimodal focus and context. This technique uses a hybrid visual and spatialised audio display space to overcome the...

The design and evaluation of a vibrotactile progress bar

Brewster, S.A., King, A.

We present an investigation into the use of Tactons to present progress information. Progress bars are common but must compete for screen space and visual attention with other visual tasks. We...

A first investigation into the effectiveness of Tactons

Brown, L.M., Brewster, S.A., Purchase, H.C.

This paper reports two experiments relating to the design of Tactons (or tactile icons). The first experiment investigated perception of vibro-tactile "roughness" (created using amplitude modulated...

Designing non-speech sounds to support navigation in mobile phone menus

Leplatre, G., Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes a framework for integrating non-speech audio to hierarchical menu structures where the visual feedback is limited. In the first part of this paper, emphasis is put on how to...

Caring, sharing widgets: a toolkit of sensitive widgets

Crease, M., Brewster, S.A., Gray, P.

Although most of us communicate using multiple sensory modalities in our lives, and many of our computers are similarly capable of multi-modal interaction, most human-computer interaction is...

Haptic graphs for blind computer users

Yu, W., Ramloll, R., Brewster, S.A.

In this paper we discuss the design of computer-based haptic graphs for blind and visually impaired people with the support of our preliminary experimental results. Since visual impairment makes data...

Communicating with feeling

Oakley, I., Brewster, S.A., Gray, P.D.

Communication between users in shared editors takes place in a deprived environment - distributed users find it difficult to communicate. While many solutions to the problems this causes have been...

A toolkit of mechanism and context independent widgets

Crease, M., Gray, P., Brewster, S.A.

Most human-computer interfaces are designed to run on a static platform (e.g. a workstation with a monitor) in a static environment (e.g. an office). However, with mobile devices becoming ubiquitous...

The effective combination of haptic and auditory textural information

McGee, M.R., Gray, P.D., Brewster, S.A.

With the increasing availability and quality of auditory and haptic means of interaction, it is not unusual to incorporate many modalities in interfaces rather than the purely visual. The user can be...

Effects of reproduction equipment on interaction with a spatial audio interface

Marentakis, G., Brewster, S.A.

Spatial audio displays have been criticized because the use of headphones may isolate users from their real world audio environment. In this paper we study the effects of three types of audio...

An investigation into the use of tactons to present progress information

Brewster, S.A., King, A.

This paper presents an initial investigation into the use of Tactons, or tactile icons, to present progress information in desktop human-computer interfaces. Progress bars are very common in a wide...

The effect of age and font size on reading text on handheld computers

Darroch, I., Goodman, J., Brewster, S.A., Gray, P.D.

Though there have been many studies of computer based text reading, only a few have considered the small screens of handheld computers. This paper presents an investigation into the effect of varying...

Haptic perception of virtual roughness

McGee, M.R., Gray, P.D., Brewster, S.A.

The texture of a virtual surface can both increase the sense of realism of an object as well as convey information about object identity, type, location, function, and so on. It is crucial therefore...

Solving multi-target haptic problems in menu interaction

Oakley, I., Brewster, S.A., Gray, P.D.

While haptic feedback has been shown to enhance user performance and satisfaction in single target interactions in desktop user interfaces, it is not clear whether this will hold for more realistic,...

Using non-speech sounds to improve access to 2D tabular numerical information for visually impaired users

Ramloll, R., Yu, W., Riedel, B., Brewster, S.A.

We investigated two solutions for numerical (2D) tabular data discovery and overview for visually impaired and blind users. One involved accessing information in tables (26 rows x 10 columns...

Diary in the sky: A spatial audio display for a mobile calendar

Walker, A., Brewster, S.A., McGookin, D., Ng, A.

We present a spatial audio display technique that overcomes the presentation rate bottleneck of traditional monaural audio displays. Our compact speech display works by encoding message semantics...

"Sitting too close to the screen can be bad for your ears": A study of audio-visual location discrepancy detection under different visual projections

Walker, A., Brewster, S.A.

In this work, we look at the perception of event locality under conditions of disparate audio and visual cues. We address an aspect of the so called “ventriloquism effect” relevant for...

A generic approach for augmenting tactile diagrams with spatial non-speech sounds

Ramloll, R., Brewster, S.A.

Blind or visually impaired users typically access diagrams in the tactile medium. This paper describes TouchMelody, a system designed for augmenting such existing diagrams with 3D spatial auditory...

Gait phase effects in mobile interaction

Crossan, A., Murray-Smith, R., Brewster, S.A., Kelly, J., Musizza, B.

One problem evaluating mobile and wearable devices is that they are used in mobile settings, making it hard to collect usability data. We present a study of tap-based selection of on-screen targets...

Haptic feedback in the training of veterinary students

Brewster, S.A., Montgomery Masters, M., Glendye, A., Kriz, N., Reid, S.

This paper reports on an initial study into the use of haptic (or touch) technology in the training of veterinary students. One major problem faced in veterinary education is that animals can be...

Using earcons to improve the usability of tool palettes

Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes an experiment to investigate the effectiveness of adding sound to tool palettes. Palette shave usability problems because users need to see the information they present but they...

Using earcons to improve the usability of a graphics package

Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes how non–speech sounds can be used to improve the usability of a graphics package. Sound was specifically used to aid problems with tool palettes and finding the current mouse...

The design of sonically-enhanced widgets

Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes the design of user-interface widgets that include non-speech sound. Previous research has shown that the addition of sound can improve the usability of human–computer...

The design and evaluation of a sonically enhanced tool palette

Brewster, S.A., Clarke, C.

This paper describes an experiment to investigate the effectiveness of adding sound to tool palettes. Palettes have usability problems because users need to see the information they present, but they...

Sonically-enhanced widgets: comments on Brewster and Clarke, ICAD 1997

Brewster, S.A.

This paper presents a review of the research surrounding the paper “The Design and Evaluation of a Sonically Enhanced Tool Palette” by Brewster and Clarke from ICAD 1997. A historical perspective...

SoundBar: exploiting multiple views in multimodal graph browsing

McGookin, D.K., Brewster, S.A.

In this paper we discuss why access to mathematical graphs is problematic for visually impaired people. By a review of graph understanding theory and interviews with visually impaired users, we...

Using non-speech sounds to provide navigation cues

Brewster, S.A.

This article describes 3 experiments that investigate the possibiity of using structured nonspeech audio messages called earcons to provide navigational cues in a menu hierarchy. A hierarchy of 27...

A comparison of feedback cues for enhancing pointing efficiency in interaction with spatial audio displays

Marentakis, G., Brewster, S.A.

An empirical study that compared six different feedback cue types to enhance pointing efficiency in deictic spatial audio displays is presented. Participants were asked to select a sound using a...

Using non-speech sound to overcome information overload

Brewster, S.A.

With ever increasing amounts of visual information to take in when interacting with computers, users can become overloaded. One reason is that computers communicate solely by graphical output. This...

Navigating telephone-based interfaces with earcons

Brewster, S.A.

Non-speech audio messages called earcons can provide powerful navigation cues in menu hierarchies. However, previous research on earcons has not addressed the particular problems of menus in...

Earcons as a method of providing navigational cues in a menu hierarchy

Brewster, S.A., Kortekangas, A.

We describe an experiment to discover if structured audio messages, earcons, could provide navigational cues in a menu hierarchy. A hierarchy of 27 nodes and four levels was created with sounds for...

Perspectives on the design of musical auditory interfaces

Leplatre, G., Brewster, S.A.

This paper addresses the issue of music as a communication medium in auditory human-computer interfaces. So far, psychoacoustics has had a great influence on the development of auditory interfaces,...

The design and evaluation of an auditory-enhanced scrollbar

Brewster, S.A., Wright, P.C., Edwards, A.D.N.

A structured method is described for the analysis of interactions to identify situations where hidden information may exist and where non-speech sound might be used to overcome the associated...

Web-based multimodal graphs for visually impaired people

Yu, W., Reid, D., Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes the development and evaluation of Web-based multimodal graphs designed for visually impaired and blind people. The information in the graphs is conveyed to visually impaired...

Multimodal virtual reality versus printed medium in visualization for blind people

Yu, W., Brewster, S.A.

In this paper, we describe a study comparing the strengths of a multimodal Virtual Reality (VR) interface against traditional tactile diagrams in conveying information to visually impaired and blind...

Overcoming the lack of screen space on mobile computers

Brewster, S.A.

One difficulty for interface design on mobile computers is lack of screen space caused by their small size. This paper describes a small pilot study and two formal experiments that investigate the...

Guidelines for the design of haptic widgets

Oakley, I., Adams, A., Brewster, S.A., Gray, P.D.

Haptic feedback has been shown to improve user performance in Graphical User Interface (GUI) targeting tasks in a number of studies. These studies have typically focused on interactions with...

Multi-session VR medical training - The HOPS simulator

Crossan, A., Brewster, S.A., Reid, S., Mellor, D.

Virtual reality medical simulators offer the potential to provide a training environment for a novice doctor to practice skills without risk to patients. However, these simulators must be shown to...

An environment for studying the impact of spatialising sonified graphs on data comprehension

Ramloll, R., Brewster, S.A.

We describe AudioCave, an environment for exploring the impact of spatialising sonified graphs on a set of numerical data comprehension tasks. Its design builds on findings regarding the...

Visualization tools for blind people using multiple modalities

Brewster, S.A.

Purpose: There are many problems when blind people need to access visualizations such as graphs and tables. Current speech or raised-paper technology does not provide a good solution. Our approach is...

Crossmodal spatial location: initial experiments

Hoggan, E., Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes an alternative form of interaction for mobile devices using crossmodal output. The aim of our work is to investigate the equivalence of audio and tactile displays so that the...

Correcting menu usability problems with sound

Brewster, S.A, Crease, M.G.

Future human-computer interfaces will use more than just graphical output to display information. In this paper we suggest that sound and graphics together can be used to improve interaction. We...

Maximising screen-space on mobile computing devices

Brewster, S.A, Cryer, P.G.

One major problem with mobile computing devices is lack of screen space. One way to overcome this is to reduce the size of the graphical components on screen and present information in sound. This...

Effects of feedback, mobility and index of difficulty on deictic spatial audio target acquisition in the horizontal plane

Marentakis, G.N., Brewster, S.A.

We present the results of an empirical study investigating the effect of feedback, mobility and index of difficulty on a deictic spatial audio target acquisition task in the horizontal plane in front...

Parallel earcons: reducing the length of audio messages

Brewster, S.A., Wright, P.C., Edwards, A.D.N.

This paper describes a method of presenting structured audio messages, earcons, in parallel so that they take less time to play and can better keep pace with interactions in a human-computer...

Feeling what you hear: tactile feedback for navigation of audio graphs

Wall, S., Brewster, S.A.

Access to digitally stored numerical data is currently very limited for sight impaired people. Graphs and visualizations are often used to analyze relationships between numerical data, but the...

MultiVis: improving access to visualisations for visually impaired people

McGookin, D.K., Brewster, S.A.

This paper illustrates work undertaken on the MultiVis project to allow visually impaired users both to construct and browse mathematical graphs effectively. We start by discussing the need for such...

Olfoto: designing a smell-based interaction

Brewster, S.A., McGookin, D.K., Miller, C.A.

We present a study into the use of smell for searching digi-tal photo collections. Many people now have large photo libraries on their computers and effective search tools are needed. Smell has a...

An evaluation of earcons for use in auditory human-computer interfaces

Brewster, S.A., Wright, P.C., Edwards, A.D.N.

An evaluation of earcons was carried out to seee whether they are an effective means of communicating information in sound. An initial experiment showed that earcons were better than unstructured...

Enhancing scanning input with non-speech sounds

Brewster, S.A., Kortekangas, A.

This paper proposed the addition of non-speech sounds to aid people who use scanning as their method of input. Scanning input is a temporal task; users have to press a switch when a cursor is over...

Sonically enhanced interface toolkit

Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes an on-going research project investigating the design of a user-interface toolkit composed of sonically enhanced widgets. The motivation for this work is the same that motivated...

Non-visual overviews of complex data sets

Kildal, J., Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes the design and preliminary testing of an interface to obtain overview information from complex numerical data tables non-visually, which is something that cannot be done with...

Two-handed navigation in a haptic virtual environment

Crossan, A., Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes the initial results from a study looking at a two-handed interaction paradigm for tactile navigation for blind and visually impaired users. Participants were set the task of...

Crossmodal icons for information display

Hoggan, E.E., Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes a novel form of display using crossmodal output. A crossmodal icon is an abstract icon that can be instantiated in one of two equivalent forms (auditory or tactile). These can be...

Tactile crescendos and sforzandos: applying musical techniques to tactile icon design

Brown, L.M., Brewster, S.A., Purchase, H.C.

Tactile icons (Tactons) are structured vibrotactile messages which can be used for non visual information display. Information is encoded in Tactons by manipulating vibrotactile parameters. This...

Evaluation of multimodal graphs for blind people

Yu, W., Brewster, S.A.

This paper introduces the development of a multimodal data visualisation system and its evaluations. This system is designed to improve blind and visually impaired peoples access to graphs and...

Multimodal 'eyes-free' interaction techniques for wearable devices

Brewster, S.A., Lumsden, J., Bell, M., Hall, M., Tasker, S.

Mobile and wearable computers present input/output prob-lems due to limited screen space and interaction techniques. When mobile, users typically focus their visual attention on navigating their...

Assessing haptic properties for data representation

Wall, S.A., Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes the results of a series of forced choice design experiments investigating the discrimination of material properties using a PHANToM haptic device. Research has shown that the...

Using compound earcons to represent hierarchies

Brewster, S.A., Capriotti, A., Hall, C.V.

Previous research on non-speech audio messages called earcons showed that they could provide powerful navigation cues in menu hierarchies. This work used hierarchical earcons. In this paper we...

Tac-tiles: multimodal pie charts for visually impaired users

Wall, S.A., Brewster, S.A.

Tac-tiles is an accessible interface that allows visually impaired users to browse graphical information using tactile and audio feedback. The system uses a graphics tablet which is augmented with a...

Multidimensional tactons for non-visual information presentation in mobile devices

Brown, L.M., Brewster, S.A., Purchase, H.C.

Tactons are structured vibrotactile messages which can be used for non-visual information presentation when visual displays are limited, unavailable or inappropriate, such as in mobile phones and...

Understanding concurrent earcons: applying auditory scene analysis principles to concurrent earcon recognition

McGookin, D.K., Brewster, S.A.

Two investigations into the identification of concurrently presented, structured sounds, called earcons were carried out. One of the experiments investigated how varying the number of concurrently...

Study on gestural interaction with a 3D audio display

Marentakis, G., Brewster, S.A.

The study reported here investigates the design and evaluation of a gesture-controlled, spatially-arranged auditory user interface for a mobile computer. Such an interface may provide a solution to...

DOLPHIN: the design and initial evaluation of multimodal focus and context

McGookin, D.K., Brewster, S.A.

In this paper we describe a new focus and context visualisation technique called multimodal focus and context. This technique uses a hybrid visual and spatialised audio display space to overcome the...

Drawing by ear: interpreting sonified line graphs

Brown, L.M., Brewster, S.A.

The research presented here describes a pilot study into the interpretation of sonified line graphs containing two data series. The experiment aimed to discover the level of accuracy with which...

Design guidelines for audio presentation of graphs and tables

Brown, L.M., Brewster, S.A., Ramloll, S.A., Burton, R., Riedel, B.

Audio can be used to make visualisations accessible to blind and visually impaired people. The MultiVis Project has carried out research into suitable methods for presenting graphs and tables to...

Exploring computer-generated line graphs through virtual touch

Yu, W., Ramloll, R., Brewster, S.A., Riedel, B.

This paper describes the development and evaluation of a haptic interface designed to provide access to line graphs for blind or visually impaired people. Computer-generated line graphs can be felt...

Comparing two haptic interfaces for multimodal graph rendering

Yu, W., Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes the evaluation of two multimodal interfaces designed to provide visually impaired people with access to various types of graphs. The interfaces consist of audio and haptics which...

Putting the feel in ’look and feel‘

Oakley, I., McGee, M.R., Brewster, S.A., Gray, P.D.

Haptic devices are now commercially available and thus touch has become a potentially realistic solution to a variety of interaction design challenges. We report on an investigation of the use of...

Spatial audio in small display screen devices

Walker, A., Brewster, S.A.

Our work addresses the problem of (visual) clutter in mobile device interfaces. The solution we propose involves the translation of technique-from the graphical to the audio domain-for expliting...

Presenting dynamic information on mobile computers

Brewster, S.A., Murray, R.

A problem with mobile computing devices is the output of dynamic information owing to their small screens. This paper describes an experiment to investigate the use of non-speech sounds to present...

The design and evaluation of a vibrotactile progress bar

Brewster, S.A., King, A.

We present an investigation into the use of Tactons to present progress information. Progress bars are common but must compete for screen space and visual attention with other visual tasks. We...

A first investigation into the effectiveness of Tactons

Brown, L.M., Brewster, S.A., Purchase, H.C.

This paper reports two experiments relating to the design of Tactons (or tactile icons). The first experiment investigated perception of vibro-tactile "roughness" (created using amplitude modulated...

Designing non-speech sounds to support navigation in mobile phone menus

Leplatre, G., Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes a framework for integrating non-speech audio to hierarchical menu structures where the visual feedback is limited. In the first part of this paper, emphasis is put on how to...

Caring, sharing widgets: a toolkit of sensitive widgets

Crease, M., Brewster, S.A., Gray, P.

Although most of us communicate using multiple sensory modalities in our lives, and many of our computers are similarly capable of multi-modal interaction, most human-computer interaction is...

Haptic graphs for blind computer users

Yu, W., Ramloll, R., Brewster, S.A.

In this paper we discuss the design of computer-based haptic graphs for blind and visually impaired people with the support of our preliminary experimental results. Since visual impairment makes data...

Communicating with feeling

Oakley, I., Brewster, S.A., Gray, P.D.

Communication between users in shared editors takes place in a deprived environment - distributed users find it difficult to communicate. While many solutions to the problems this causes have been...

A toolkit of mechanism and context independent widgets

Crease, M., Gray, P., Brewster, S.A.

Most human-computer interfaces are designed to run on a static platform (e.g. a workstation with a monitor) in a static environment (e.g. an office). However, with mobile devices becoming ubiquitous...

The effective combination of haptic and auditory textural information

McGee, M.R., Gray, P.D., Brewster, S.A.

With the increasing availability and quality of auditory and haptic means of interaction, it is not unusual to incorporate many modalities in interfaces rather than the purely visual. The user can be...

Gait phase effects in mobile interaction

Crossan, A., Murray-Smith, R., Brewster, S.A., Kelly, J., Musizza, B.

One problem evaluating mobile and wearable devices is that they are used in mobile settings, making it hard to collect usability data. We present a study of tap-based selection of on-screen targets...

Effects of reproduction equipment on interaction with a spatial audio interface

Marentakis, G., Brewster, S.A.

Spatial audio displays have been criticized because the use of headphones may isolate users from their real world audio environment. In this paper we study the effects of three types of audio...

An investigation into the use of tactons to present progress information

Brewster, S.A., King, A.

This paper presents an initial investigation into the use of Tactons, or tactile icons, to present progress information in desktop human-computer interfaces. Progress bars are very common in a wide...

The effect of age and font size on reading text on handheld computers

Darroch, I., Goodman, J., Brewster, S.A., Gray, P.D.

Though there have been many studies of computer based text reading, only a few have considered the small screens of handheld computers. This paper presents an investigation into the effect of varying...

Haptic perception of virtual roughness

McGee, M.R., Gray, P.D., Brewster, S.A.

The texture of a virtual surface can both increase the sense of realism of an object as well as convey information about object identity, type, location, function, and so on. It is crucial therefore...

Solving multi-target haptic problems in menu interaction

Oakley, I., Brewster, S.A., Gray, P.D.

While haptic feedback has been shown to enhance user performance and satisfaction in single target interactions in desktop user interfaces, it is not clear whether this will hold for more realistic,...

Using non-speech sounds to improve access to 2D tabular numerical information for visually impaired users

Ramloll, R., Yu, W., Riedel, B., Brewster, S.A.

We investigated two solutions for numerical (2D) tabular data discovery and overview for visually impaired and blind users. One involved accessing information in tables (26 rows x 10 columns...

Diary in the sky: A spatial audio display for a mobile calendar

Walker, A., Brewster, S.A., McGookin, D., Ng, A.

We present a spatial audio display technique that overcomes the presentation rate bottleneck of traditional monaural audio displays. Our compact speech display works by encoding message semantics...

"Sitting too close to the screen can be bad for your ears": A study of audio-visual location discrepancy detection under different visual projections

Walker, A., Brewster, S.A.

In this work, we look at the perception of event locality under conditions of disparate audio and visual cues. We address an aspect of the so called “ventriloquism effect” relevant for...

A generic approach for augmenting tactile diagrams with spatial non-speech sounds

Ramloll, R., Brewster, S.A.

Blind or visually impaired users typically access diagrams in the tactile medium. This paper describes TouchMelody, a system designed for augmenting such existing diagrams with 3D spatial auditory...

Web-based multimodal graphs for visually impaired people

Yu, W., Reid, D., Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes the development and evaluation of Web-based multimodal graphs designed for visually impaired and blind people. The information in the graphs is conveyed to visually impaired...

Multimodal virtual reality versus printed medium in visualization for blind people

Yu, W., Brewster, S.A.

In this paper, we describe a study comparing the strengths of a multimodal Virtual Reality (VR) interface against traditional tactile diagrams in conveying information to visually impaired and blind...

Overcoming the lack of screen space on mobile computers

Brewster, S.A.

One difficulty for interface design on mobile computers is lack of screen space caused by their small size. This paper describes a small pilot study and two formal experiments that investigate the...

Guidelines for the design of haptic widgets

Oakley, I., Adams, A., Brewster, S.A., Gray, P.D.

Haptic feedback has been shown to improve user performance in Graphical User Interface (GUI) targeting tasks in a number of studies. These studies have typically focused on interactions with...

Multi-session VR medical training - The HOPS simulator

Crossan, A., Brewster, S.A., Reid, S., Mellor, D.

Virtual reality medical simulators offer the potential to provide a training environment for a novice doctor to practice skills without risk to patients. However, these simulators must be shown to...

An environment for studying the impact of spatialising sonified graphs on data comprehension

Ramloll, R., Brewster, S.A.

We describe AudioCave, an environment for exploring the impact of spatialising sonified graphs on a set of numerical data comprehension tasks. Its design builds on findings regarding the...

Visualization tools for blind people using multiple modalities

Brewster, S.A.

Purpose: There are many problems when blind people need to access visualizations such as graphs and tables. Current speech or raised-paper technology does not provide a good solution. Our approach is...

Haptic feedback in the training of veterinary students

Brewster, S.A., Montgomery Masters, M., Glendye, A., Kriz, N., Reid, S.

This paper reports on an initial study into the use of haptic (or touch) technology in the training of veterinary students. One major problem faced in veterinary education is that animals can be...

Tac-tiles: multimodal pie charts for visually impaired users

Wall, S.A., Brewster, S.A.

Tac-tiles is an accessible interface that allows visually impaired users to browse graphical information using tactile and audio feedback. The system uses a graphics tablet which is augmented with a...

Crossmodal spatial location: initial experiments

Hoggan, E., Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes an alternative form of interaction for mobile devices using crossmodal output. The aim of our work is to investigate the equivalence of audio and tactile displays so that the...

Correcting menu usability problems with sound

Brewster, S.A, Crease, M.G.

Future human-computer interfaces will use more than just graphical output to display information. In this paper we suggest that sound and graphics together can be used to improve interaction. We...

Maximising screen-space on mobile computing devices

Brewster, S.A, Cryer, P.G.

One major problem with mobile computing devices is lack of screen space. One way to overcome this is to reduce the size of the graphical components on screen and present information in sound. This...

Using earcons to improve the usability of tool palettes

Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes an experiment to investigate the effectiveness of adding sound to tool palettes. Palette shave usability problems because users need to see the information they present but they...

Using earcons to improve the usability of a graphics package

Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes how non–speech sounds can be used to improve the usability of a graphics package. Sound was specifically used to aid problems with tool palettes and finding the current mouse...

The design of sonically-enhanced widgets

Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes the design of user-interface widgets that include non-speech sound. Previous research has shown that the addition of sound can improve the usability of human–computer...

The design and evaluation of a sonically enhanced tool palette

Brewster, S.A., Clarke, C.

This paper describes an experiment to investigate the effectiveness of adding sound to tool palettes. Palettes have usability problems because users need to see the information they present, but they...

Sonically-enhanced widgets: comments on Brewster and Clarke, ICAD 1997

Brewster, S.A.

This paper presents a review of the research surrounding the paper “The Design and Evaluation of a Sonically Enhanced Tool Palette” by Brewster and Clarke from ICAD 1997. A historical perspective...

SoundBar: exploiting multiple views in multimodal graph browsing

McGookin, D.K., Brewster, S.A.

In this paper we discuss why access to mathematical graphs is problematic for visually impaired people. By a review of graph understanding theory and interviews with visually impaired users, we...

Using non-speech sounds to provide navigation cues

Brewster, S.A.

This article describes 3 experiments that investigate the possibiity of using structured nonspeech audio messages called earcons to provide navigational cues in a menu hierarchy. A hierarchy of 27...

A comparison of feedback cues for enhancing pointing efficiency in interaction with spatial audio displays

Marentakis, G., Brewster, S.A.

An empirical study that compared six different feedback cue types to enhance pointing efficiency in deictic spatial audio displays is presented. Participants were asked to select a sound using a...

Using non-speech sound to overcome information overload

Brewster, S.A.

With ever increasing amounts of visual information to take in when interacting with computers, users can become overloaded. One reason is that computers communicate solely by graphical output. This...

Navigating telephone-based interfaces with earcons

Brewster, S.A.

Non-speech audio messages called earcons can provide powerful navigation cues in menu hierarchies. However, previous research on earcons has not addressed the particular problems of menus in...

Tactile crescendos and sforzandos: applying musical techniques to tactile icon design

Brown, L.M., Brewster, S.A., Purchase, H.C.

Tactile icons (Tactons) are structured vibrotactile messages which can be used for non visual information display. Information is encoded in Tactons by manipulating vibrotactile parameters. This...

Olfoto: designing a smell-based interaction

Brewster, S.A., McGookin, D.K., Miller, C.A.

We present a study into the use of smell for searching digi-tal photo collections. Many people now have large photo libraries on their computers and effective search tools are needed. Smell has a...

Earcons as a method of providing navigational cues in a menu hierarchy

Brewster, S.A., Kortekangas, A.

We describe an experiment to discover if structured audio messages, earcons, could provide navigational cues in a menu hierarchy. A hierarchy of 27 nodes and four levels was created with sounds for...

Perspectives on the design of musical auditory interfaces

Leplatre, G., Brewster, S.A.

This paper addresses the issue of music as a communication medium in auditory human-computer interfaces. So far, psychoacoustics has had a great influence on the development of auditory interfaces,...

The design and evaluation of an auditory-enhanced scrollbar

Brewster, S.A., Wright, P.C., Edwards, A.D.N.

A structured method is described for the analysis of interactions to identify situations where hidden information may exist and where non-speech sound might be used to overcome the associated...

Multidimensional tactons for non-visual information presentation in mobile devices

Brown, L.M., Brewster, S.A., Purchase, H.C.

Tactons are structured vibrotactile messages which can be used for non-visual information presentation when visual displays are limited, unavailable or inappropriate, such as in mobile phones and...

An evaluation of earcons for use in auditory human-computer interfaces

Brewster, S.A., Wright, P.C., Edwards, A.D.N.

An evaluation of earcons was carried out to seee whether they are an effective means of communicating information in sound. An initial experiment showed that earcons were better than unstructured...

Effects of feedback, mobility and index of difficulty on deictic spatial audio target acquisition in the horizontal plane

Marentakis, G.N., Brewster, S.A.

We present the results of an empirical study investigating the effect of feedback, mobility and index of difficulty on a deictic spatial audio target acquisition task in the horizontal plane in front...

Parallel earcons: reducing the length of audio messages

Brewster, S.A., Wright, P.C., Edwards, A.D.N.

This paper describes a method of presenting structured audio messages, earcons, in parallel so that they take less time to play and can better keep pace with interactions in a human-computer...

Feeling what you hear: tactile feedback for navigation of audio graphs

Wall, S., Brewster, S.A.

Access to digitally stored numerical data is currently very limited for sight impaired people. Graphs and visualizations are often used to analyze relationships between numerical data, but the...

MultiVis: improving access to visualisations for visually impaired people

McGookin, D.K., Brewster, S.A.

This paper illustrates work undertaken on the MultiVis project to allow visually impaired users both to construct and browse mathematical graphs effectively. We start by discussing the need for such...

Enhancing scanning input with non-speech sounds

Brewster, S.A., Kortekangas, A.

This paper proposed the addition of non-speech sounds to aid people who use scanning as their method of input. Scanning input is a temporal task; users have to press a switch when a cursor is over...

Sonically enhanced interface toolkit

Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes an on-going research project investigating the design of a user-interface toolkit composed of sonically enhanced widgets. The motivation for this work is the same that motivated...

Non-visual overviews of complex data sets

Kildal, J., Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes the design and preliminary testing of an interface to obtain overview information from complex numerical data tables non-visually, which is something that cannot be done with...

Two-handed navigation in a haptic virtual environment

Crossan, A., Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes the initial results from a study looking at a two-handed interaction paradigm for tactile navigation for blind and visually impaired users. Participants were set the task of...

Crossmodal icons for information display

Hoggan, E.E., Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes a novel form of display using crossmodal output. A crossmodal icon is an abstract icon that can be instantiated in one of two equivalent forms (auditory or tactile). These can be...

Evaluation of multimodal graphs for blind people

Yu, W., Brewster, S.A.

This paper introduces the development of a multimodal data visualisation system and its evaluations. This system is designed to improve blind and visually impaired peoples access to graphs and...

Multimodal 'eyes-free' interaction techniques for wearable devices

Brewster, S.A., Lumsden, J., Bell, M., Hall, M., Tasker, S.

Mobile and wearable computers present input/output prob-lems due to limited screen space and interaction techniques. When mobile, users typically focus their visual attention on navigating their...

Assessing haptic properties for data representation

Wall, S.A., Brewster, S.A.

This paper describes the results of a series of forced choice design experiments investigating the discrimination of material properties using a PHANToM haptic device. Research has shown that the...

Using compound earcons to represent hierarchies

Brewster, S.A., Capriotti, A., Hall, C.V.

Previous research on non-speech audio messages called earcons showed that they could provide powerful navigation cues in menu hierarchies. This work used hierarchical earcons. In this paper we...

Understanding concurrent earcons: applying auditory scene analysis principles to concurrent earcon recognition

McGookin, D.K., Brewster, S.A.

Two investigations into the identification of concurrently presented, structured sounds, called earcons were carried out. One of the experiments investigated how varying the number of concurrently...

Study on gestural interaction with a 3D audio display

Marentakis, G., Brewster, S.A.

The study reported here investigates the design and evaluation of a gesture-controlled, spatially-arranged auditory user interface for a mobile computer. Such an interface may provide a solution to...

A first investigation into the effectiveness of Tactons

Brown, L. M., Brewster, S. A., Purchase, H. C.

This paper reports two experiments relating to the design of Tactons (or tactile icons). The first experiment investigated perception of vibro-tactile "roughness" (created using amplitude modulated...

Non-visual information display using tactons

Brewster, S.A., Brown, L.M.

This paper describes a novel form of display using tactile output. Tactons, or tactile icons, are structured tactile messages that can be used to communicate message to users non visually. A range of...

Tactons: structured tactile messages for non-visual information display

Brewster, S.A., Brown, L.M.

Tactile displays are now becoming available in a form that can be easily used in a user interface. This paper describes a new form of tactile output. Tactons, or tactile icons, are structured,...

A first investigation into the effectiveness of Tactons

Brown, L. M., Brewster, S. A., Purchase, H. C.

This paper reports two experiments relating to the design of Tactons (or tactile icons). The first experiment investigated perception of vibro-tactile "roughness" (created using amplitude modulated...

Tactons: structured tactile messages for non-visual information display

Brewster, S.A., Brown, L.M.

Tactile displays are now becoming available in a form that can be easily used in a user interface. This paper describes a new form of tactile output. Tactons, or tactile icons, are structured,...

Non-visual information display using tactons

Brewster, S.A., Brown, L.M.

This paper describes a novel form of display using tactile output. Tactons, or tactile icons, are structured tactile messages that can be used to communicate message to users non visually. A range of...