Comparative study

= Internet Explorer only

The first part was devoted to a program by program study.
The second part is an action by action study.

Similar actions or alerts are put together, in order to emphasize on common audio aspects.

I General notion of "opening"
II General notion of "closing"
III Feedbacks / alerts
IV Menu sonification
V Operating systems

I General notion of "opening"

1. "Welcome" - samples - analysis

2. "Window open" - samples - analysis

II General notion of "closing"

1. "Goodbye" - samples - analysis

2. "Window close" - samples - analysis

III Feedbacks / alerts

Are included in the current categorie :

Alarms : when, unexpectingly & suddenly, something goes seriously wrong
Notices : just something the program wants you to notice
Alerts : something you got to know happens
Action feedback : for instance, when pushing a button, telling whether it's possible or not
Action aknowledgement : your action has been performed

Theses notions that could have been considered separately. They are together anyway, for several reasons :

1. An alert can be considered as a negative feedback - a feedback to an implicit question, whereas a real feedback is a feedback to an explicit question
2."negative" alert sonification and negative feedback sonification can easily be switched
3. Alerts can be sorted on a negative/positive scale just as feedbacks : for instance an alert is more disturbing than a notice, which is less than an alarm.

Feedbacks / alerts / notices / alarms / aknowledgement are therefore sorted together.
We can then imagine a negative / positive axis, with seven degrees, from the gravest alarm to the most relieving event.

Click here to see axis details.

Here are audio examples corresponding to each degree :

IV Menu sonification

In every program, menus can be found.
A menu can involve a lot of actions, some of which are common to the first three paragraphs here.

Nevertheless, an overview of possible menu controls and sonification can be interesting.

V Operating systems

Two operating systems are studied in terms of sonification macOS9 & Windows 98.

Here are the sonificated actions in each OS: MacOS9 - Win 98

(here are the complete sonification study of each OS : MacOS9 - Win 98)

It can be easily noticed that Microsoft & Apple sonification's ways of thinking are very different :
Whereas Apple takes every action in the software development meaning (such as event handlers etc.) and tries to traduce them in audio samples, Microsoft considers an arbitrary number of sonificated actions, actions viewed from the user's point.

Apple's point of view leads to almost infinitely customizable OS sonification - on the other hand, the interface rapidly becomes oversonificated.
Microsoft's point of view is more reasonable & more realistic. On the other hand, choices are rather arbitrary, and not necesserily wise.

It can also be noticed that Microsoft tries to distinguish between several alert types, whereas Apple proposes only one alert type - the traditional Mac alert sound, which is not included in the sonification scheme, but is a separated property.

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