Auditory interfaces are used for interaction in mobile environments when access to the visual display can be too distracting or might not even be a possibility. However, a key problem with audio, as opposed to visual displays, is dealing with multiple simultaneous outputs. How 3D audio techniques might be implemented in such an interactive environment and how to manage multiple audio streams without overloading the user are the key questions behind this research.

In this talk I will first provide a general introduction to spatial audio (also called 3D audio), and then divide the rest of the talk into three different sections in which I will present: 1) The evaluation results of the spatial audio capabilities supported on a Nokia N95 8GB mobile phone as the platform of choice for implementing our spatial audio interfaces, 2) Results from a recent experiment in which spatial audio was used to implement strategies for alternating focus between audio streams, 3) Describe the research currently being carried out here in Funchal, in which 3D audio techniques are used to manage multiple audio streams in a sound garden.

Bio:
Yolanda Vazquez-Alvarez is a PhD student in the Multimodal Interaction Group at the Department of Computing Science in Glasgow University, UK. Her PhD work investigates the use of spatialised audio cues for output when mobile. This research is being funded by EPSRC and Nokia and is part of the Gestural and Audio Interactions for Mobile Environments (GAIME) project. In a previous life before HCI, her interest in speech science led her to work for a Text-to-Speech (TTS) company in Edinburgh before moving to the world of experimental phonetics to do research into the use of ultrasound to study the articulation of speech sounds. More recently, she worked with the Vision Group at the Psychology department in Glasgow University carrying out research on human perception, decision-making and strategic interaction in both real and simulated 3D environments. She is now fully immersed in HCI and currently in the second year of her PhD program. She has just recently been awarded the Ken Browning award to visit the University of Madeira in Funchal for 3 months to implement a locative audio environment to test different spatial audio interfaces.
  
Web: http://www.gaime-project.com