Ambient Rhythm: Melodic Sonification of Status Information for IoT-enabled Devices

Abstract

In this paper we explore how to embed status information of IoT-enabled devices in the acoustic atmosphere using melodic ambient sounds while limiting obtrusiveness for the user. The user can use arbitrary sound samples to represent the devices he wants to monitor. Our system combines these sound samples into a melodic ambient rhythm that contains information on all the processes or variables that user is monitoring. We focus on continuous rather than binary information (e.g. "monitoring progress status" rather then "new message received"). We evaluate our system in a machine monitoring scenario focusing on 5 distinct machines/processes to monitor with 6 priority levels for each. 9 participants use our system to monitor these processes with an up to 92.44% detection rate, if several levels are combined. Participants had no previous experience with this or similar systems and had only 5-10 minute training session before the tests.