The promise and peril of "sonification": giving feedback through sound

The majority of applications use "visualization" to give feedback and responses to users: think of graphs, alerts, and other visual cues about what is going on inside a computer, or what the computer has detected in the world.

Sonification is the aural equivalent of visualization: communication from computers to humans by means of sound. There's some of this already in the world: alert chimes, system beeps, and talking voice assistants. But in an age of constant earbud use, there is lots of potential for more.

Writing in Wired, Boing Boing contributor Clive Thompson (previously) discusses the growing use of sonification, from promising medical applications (using sound cues to help people with compromised movement and balance correct their gaits) to scientific analysis (transforming the hurricane telemetry into sound, allowing researchers to easily hear when hurricanes are about to intensify) to UI for everyday applications (adapting incoming message chimes to communicate something about their content, like whether they're coming from known senders or appear to be urgent).

Thompson notes, in passing, a very important caveat: "done elegantly [emphasis added], sonification could help create a world where youre still as informed as you want to be, but hopefully less frayed by nervous glances at your screens."

The reason screens are anxiety-provoking isn't solely a factor of having to get your phone out of your pocket to see what's going on -- it's also the result of an arm's race between app designers and our limbic and attentional systems. Think of how Google Fi, Lyft, and other apps use the fact that they've got permission to send you alerts (for useful things, like telling you when you've lost service or when your cab is arriving) to send you promotional messages inviting you to sign up friends or buy additional services. Read the rest