Abstract
Operation sounds for machine products have been designed to transmit or caution correct information to users. The user operation for the machine product has changed from a button operation to a touch or gesture operation according to the evolution of information devices. However, the operation sound for the machine product was not changing since the button operation was main stream. The purpose of this study is to evaluate for combination between the user operation and the operation sound for new information devices. In this paper, we conduct the evaluation experiments using eight types of typical touch operation or seven types of typical gesture operation and the different dimensional sounds, which are an ON/OFF temporal pattern sound, a pitch variation sound, and a movement of sound image. Results of the evaluation experiments are statistically analyzed by rating scale and paired comparison methods. It is experimentally confirmed that the conventional operation sound defined from the button operation is insufficient to match the touch and gesture operation. The feature of the sounds in harmony with the touch and gesture operations are also experimentally evaluated. The dimensionality of the operation sound is one of the most important factors for the user operation of the machine product.
