Designing Auditory Spaces: The Role of Expectation

This paper investigates aspects in designing auditory spaces to support novel forms of interaction in virtual spaces. Initial research on human imagined sounds from places has identified ‘expectation’ as an important psychological construct. Instead of designing realistic experience, the paper suggests a user’s sense of presence as a measure of the user’s experience in virtual spaces. The results indicate that using highly expected sounds increases users’ sense of presence. As such, it is to propose that designing auditory spaces using expectations as perceived affordance for presence is perhaps a minimal way to engaging users experience. 1 Users Experience in Virtual Spaces We have a tendency to imitate reality for virtual experience. These virtual environment designs are based on real li fe metaphors that register our senses as important aspects to optimise the virtual experience. However, perceptual realism attained through accurate perspective projection may not always be the best approach for engaging users’ experience. Taking examples from cartography that intentionally distorted to exaggerate features (Monmonier, 1991), the design of virtual experience can be very different from those happening in our everyday world. Moreover, the modern technology affords a novel way of interaction (Gaver, 1991). The concept of ‘presence’ is has becoming well accepted as the key concept to redefine virtual environments. Presence is defined as the perceptual illusion of "being there" in a mediated environment (Lombard & Ditton, 1997). This illusion of non-mediation occurs when user fails to perceive or acknowledge the existence of a medium in the environment and responds as if the medium were not there.