Smart sound environments: merging intentional soundscapes, nonspeech audio cues and ambient intelligence

Abstract

We introduce an intelligent audio notification system for multiuser environments that provides users with information about events (e.g., important emails) in a more discreet and non-distracting way. The peripheral awareness of individual-related events is done by using nonspeech audio cues which can be seamlessly integrated into artificial background soundscapes. These ambient soundscapes are self-composed with respect to well-known perceptual constraints such as auditive Gestalt laws as well as music psychological findings. To follow a hierarchical approach for the notification sounds we use notification instruments, ambient noises and traditional alert signals that are grouped by their level of intrusiveness. Since the notification system also follows a human-centered approach it takes parameters like user preferences, his/her current position in the environment and the type of event into consideration to decide which notification is the appropriate at this time. In the paper, we will describe the architecture of the personalized ambient audio notification service, compositional constraints as well as some findings of a user study in which we tested successfully the efficiency of our system with 25 subjects.