Designing an Interactive Audio Interface for Climate Science

This article presents a user-centered design approach for creating an audio interface in the context of climate science. The author´s team used contextual inquiry to gather information about scientists´ workflows and focus groups to assess data about the scientists´ specific use of language. The goal was to realize a domain-specific sonification platform and to identify climate metaphors to build a metaphoric sound identity for the sonification. In a separate set of experiments, participants were asked to pair sound stimuli with climate terms extracted from the initial interviews and to evaluate the sound samples aesthetically. They were also asked to choose sound textures (from a given set of sounds) that best express the specific climate parameter and to rate the relevance of the sound to the metaphor. The author´s team assessed correlations between climate terminology and sound stimuli for the sonification tool to improve the sound design. Results show a tendency toward natural sounds by climate scientists.