Speaking and listening on the run: design for wearable audio computing

The use of speech and auditory interaction on wearable computers can provide an awareness of events and personal messages, without requiring one\´s full attention or disrupting the foreground activity. A passive "hands-and-eyes-free" approach is appropriate when users need convenient and timely access to remote information and communication services. Nomadic Radio is a distributed computing platform for wearable access to unified messaging via an auditory interface. We demonstrate the use of auditory cues, spatialized audio, and speech I/O in the wearable interface for passive awareness, scaleable notification and navigation/control. The architecture is designed for wired audio wearables and has been extended for distributed wireless operation.