For years I have been telling students and any one else who would listen that they should explore the potential for the use of sound in interaction design or as I preferred to call it hypermedia. So I was pleased to see that at IVREA, this was becoming a focus of concern. As Molly Wright Steenson reported in a post on 9 December last year:
“I was talking to a group of second-year students here today about their thesis projects and realized that sound is becoming a major focus for interaction designers. Currently, several thesis projects are focusing on it and three from last year explored it to varying degrees: Dianna Miller?s Wrapt, Ryan Genz?s Embedded Theater and Line Ulrika Christiansen?s Re-Lounge.”
Back in 1996, when Bob Cotton, Malcolm Garrett, Cara Mannion, Christine Davis and I were working on “Understanding Hypermedia 2.000” I wrote:
“Every media element within hypermedia presents intriguing possibilities for development. But the issue of how we use sound maybe one of the most important factors in making hypermedia a truly distinctive medium, with unique characteristics and qualities. From Vannevar Bush onwards, one of hypermedia primary metaphors up until now has been print. As we learn to use sound more intelligently and more effectively this metaphor may breakdown. Already many of the other metaphors we use to describe the experience of using hypermedia are spatial. The increasing use of sound to create a sense of inclusive space, where we are within the experience rather than simply observing, may be a crucial element in establishing the new, more fruitful spatial metaphors that the medium demands.”
Maybe at last we are beginning to get there.