Edinburgh Napier University

  In order to design auditory displays that function well within the cultural, informational and acoustic ecology of everyday situations designers as well as researchers in psychoacoustics need to continue to gain a better understanding of how listeners hear and make sense of information in more ecological settings and outside the lab! In this paper the authors present a preliminary study that builds on past work and theoretical ideas from acoustic ecology, exploring the practice of everyday listening in settings containing auditory displays. This pilot study involves 10 participants who are asked to listen to two separate soundscapes and describe in three tasks, both verbally and in writing, what they hear and how they make sense of these aural environments. The results suggest directions for understanding everyday listening form a holistic perspective in order to inform both the design of auditory displays, and the development of other research tools and instruments for measuring auditory perception ecologically. The bigger study which involves 100 participants has been completed and is expected to be published shortly as a journal article.