This thesis investigates the design of audio for feedback in human-technology interaction— auditory displays. Despite promising progress in research and the potential benefits, we currently see little impact of audio in everyday interfaces. Changing interaction paradigms, new contexts of use and inclusive design principles, however, increase the need for an efficient, non-visual means of conveying information. Motivated by these needs, this work describes the development and evaluation of a methodological design framework, aiming to enhance knowledge and skill transfer in auditory display design and to enable designers to build more efficient and compelling auditory solutions. The work starts by investigating the current practice in designing audio in the user interface. A survey amongst practitioners and researchers in the field and a literature study of research papers highlighted the need for a structured design approach. Building on these results, paco – pattern design in the context space has been developed, a framework providing methods to capture, apply and refine design knowledge through design patterns. A key element of paco, the context space, serves as the organising principle for patterns, artefacts and design problems and supports designers in conceptualising the design space. The evaluation of paco is the first comparative study of a design methodology in this area. Experts in auditory display design and novice designers participated in a series of experiments to determine the usefulness of the framework. The evaluation demonstrated that paco facilitates the transfer of design knowledge and skill between experts and novices as well as promoting reflection and recording of design rationale. Alongside these principle achievements, important insights have been gained about the design process which lay the foundations for future research into this subject area. This work contributes to the field of auditory display as it reflects on the current practice and proposes a means of supporting designers to communicate, reason about and build on each other’s work more efficiently. The broader field of human-computer interaction may also benefit from the availability of design guidance for exploiting the auditory modality to answer the challenges of future interaction design. Finally, with paco a generic methodology in the field of design patterns was proposed, potentially similarly beneficial to other designing disciplines.

This paper discusses the application of a tool for experiencing the usage of Virtual Reality (VR) in the factory layout planning process of Scania. The goal is to evaluate the system's collaborative capabilities and to assess the usability. The study combines existing methodologies in a novel way. The method consists of recording 16 participants in performing a collaborative task, and then coding for Collaborative Joint attention (CJA). Furthermore the evaluation makes use of the System Usability Scale (SUS) and Nielsen's Heuristics. The system's score on the SUS appeared to be above average, but participants with higher experience in factory planning gave higher scores. There were numerous problems related to the physical room being smaller than the virtual room, user control was limited and the embodiment of the users (avatars) proved to be distracting. The findings have implications for builders and evaluators of multiparty VR systems, that allow for collaboration. The evaluators need to consider including CJA as one of their dependent variables. / Denna studie beskriver tillämpningen och utvärderingen av ett system för användning av Virtual Reality (VR) i samband med layoutplanering av Scania-fabriker. Målet är att utvärdera samarbetet inom systemet samt att bedöma användarvänligheten. Studien använder befintliga metoder på nya sätt. 16 deltagare filmas när de utför en gemensam uppgift och kodas sedan för Collaborative Joint Attention (CJA). Utvärderingen använder sig även av System Usability Scale (SUS) och Nielsens Heuristics. SUS-poängen var över genomsnittet, men deltagare med tidigare erfarenhet av layoutplanering gav systemet ett högre betyg. Det fanns många problem relaterade till att det fysiska rummet var mindre än det virtuella rummet, begränsad användarkontroll och att gestaltningen av brukarens avatar visade sig vara distraherande. Resultaten har konsekvenser för byggare och utvärderare av VR-fleranvändarsystem för samarbete. En rekommendation till utvärderare är att överväga användning av CJA som en beroende variabel.