A Generic Evaluation Model for Auditory Feedback in Complex Visual Searches

This paper proposes a method of evaluating the effect of auditory display techniques on a complex visual search task. The approach uses a pre-existing visual search task (conjunction search) to create a standardized model for audio, and non-audio assisted visual search tasks. A pre-existing auditory display technique is evaluated to test the system. Using randomly generated images, participants were asked to undertake a series of visual search tasks of set complexities, with and without audio. It was shown that using the auditory feedback improved the participant’s visual search times considerably, with statistically significant results. Additionally, it was shown that there was a larger difference between audio and non-audio when the complexity of the images was increased. The same auditory display techniques were then applied to an example of a real complex visual search task, the results of which imply a significant improvement in visual search efficiency when using auditory feedback.