title: Spearcons (speech-based earcons) improve navigation performance in advanced auditory menus.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The goal of this project is to evaluate a new auditory cue, which the authors call spearcons, in comparison to other auditory cues with the aim of improving auditory menu navigation.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  With the shrinking displays of mobile devices and increasing technology use by visually impaired users, it becomes important to improve usability of non-graphical user interface (GUI) interfaces such as auditory menus. Using nonspeech sounds called auditory icons (i.e., representative real sounds of objects or events) or earcons (i.e., brief musical melody patterns) has been proposed to enhance menu navigation. To compensate for the weaknesses of traditional nonspeech auditory cues, the authors developed spearcons by speeding up a spoken phrase, even to the point where it is no longer recognized as speech.
  
  
  METHODS
  The authors conducted five empirical experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2, they measured menu navigation efficiency and accuracy among cues. In Experiments 3 and 4, they evaluated learning rate of cues and speech itself. In Experiment 5, they assessed spearcon enhancements compared to plain TTS (text to speech: speak out written menu items) in a two-dimensional auditory menu.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Spearcons outperformed traditional and newer hybrid auditory cues in navigation efficiency, accuracy, and learning rate. Moreover, spearcons showed comparable learnability as normal speech and led to better performance than speech-only auditory cues in two-dimensional menu navigation.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These results show that spearcons can be more effective than previous auditory cues in menu-based interfaces.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Spearcons have broadened the taxonomy of nonspeech auditory cues. Users can benefit from the application of spearcons in real devices.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, 654 Cherry Street, Atlanta, GA 30332-0170, USA. bruce.walker@psych.gatech.edu
authors.forename: Bruce N
authors.initials: BN
authors.lastname: Walker
authors.forename: Jeffrey
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lindsay
authors.forename: Amanda
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Nance
authors.forename: Yoko
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Nakano
authors.forename: Dianne K
authors.initials: DK
authors.lastname: Palladino
authors.forename: Tilman
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Dingler
authors.forename: Myounghoon
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Jeon
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D000293:Adolescent; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001307:Auditory Perception; D040421:Cell Phone / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000639:trends*; D034201:Computers, Handheld / Q000639:trends*; D003463:Cues; D003626:Data Display; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D013016:Sound; D013060:Speech; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D055815:Young Adult