Perceptual features of everyday push button sounds and audiotactile interaction

Abstract

The first aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between the signal properties and the perceptual attributes of everyday push button sounds and the second aim is to investigate the effect of loudness on the perceived tactile feedback intensity from buttons. This knowledge is useful for product designers and sound engineers to find an optimum button sound and haptic feedback for a defined application. In the first step of this study, the physics and signal properties of button sounds are discussed, and an investigation was conducted to determine the users' common language to describe the perceptual properties of everyday button sounds. The results of this investigation showed that the fundamental perceptual factors of button sounds are pleasantness, confirmation, alerting, irritating, and quality. In the next step, a listening experiment was conducted to investigate the relationship between signal properties, such as frequency and damping, and the perceptual factors above. The second part of this study is concerned with auditory-tactile interaction. An experiment was conducted to understand the effect of button sound on the perceived tactile feedback. The results of the experiment clearly show that in bimodal judgments both haptic and auditory information contribute to the perceived tactile strength.