Contextual Awareness, Messaging and Communication
in Nomadic Audio Environments
Nitin Sawhney
Submitted to the Program in Media Arts and Sciences,
School of Architecture and Planning,
on May 19, 1998
in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of
Master of Science in Media Arts and Sciences
ABSTRACT
Nomadic Radio provides an audio-only wearable interface to unify remote information services such as email, voice mail, hourly news broadcasts, and personal calendar events. These messages are automatically downloaded to a wearable device throughout the day and users can browse them using speech recognition and tactile input. To provide an unobtrusive interface for nomadic users, the audio/text information is presented using a combination of ambient and auditory cues, synthetic speech and spatialized audio.
A notification model developed in Nomadic Radio
dynamically selects the relevant presentation level for incoming
messages based on message priority, user activity and the level
of conversation in the environment. Temporal actions of the
user such as activating or ignoring messages while listening,
reinforce or decay the presentation level over time and change
the underlying notification model. Scaleable notification allows
incoming messages to be dynamically presented as subtle ambient
sounds, distinct VoiceCues, spoken summaries or spatialized
audio streams foregrounded for the listener.
This thesis addresses techniques for peripheral awareness,
spatial listening and contextual notification to manage the user's
focus of attention on a wearable audio computing platform.
Thesis Supervisor: Christopher M. Schmandt
Thesis Readers: Alex Pentland, Pattie Maes and Hiroshi Ishii
MIT Media Laboratory
Thesis document available (122 pages) :
Adobe Acrobat PDF (1.7 MB)
Compressed Postscript (2 MB)
For related conference papers and technical reports go to the Nomadic Radio website.