Navigation Efficiency of Two Dimensional Auditory Menus Using Spearcon Enhancements

A total of 28 undergraduates navigated to specific items in a two dimensional menu that was displayed using only sound. The auditory menu consisted of either text-to-speech (TTS) only, or TTS enhanced with spearcons. Spearcons are brief sound cues created by compressing the original TTS sound file. Speed of navigation to target items in the auditory menu was found to be significantly faster in the spearcon condition than in the condition using only TTS. There was also a smaller per-item cost in terms of speed for the spearcon-enhanced menu, leading to increasingly better performance as menu length increased. These results provide further evidence that spearcon enhancements can lead to faster navigational performance in auditory menus, when compared to text-to-speech alone.