Amer, T. S. and Maris, Jo-Mae B. and Neal, Greg (2010) The perceived hazard of earcons in information technology exception messages: The effect of musical dissonance: Working paper series--10-03. Working Paper. NAU W.A. Franke College of Business.
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Abstract
Users of information technology (IT) commonly encounter exception messages during their interactions with application programs to signal a computing problem or error. Exception messages often are accompanied by earcons which are aural messages of a musical nature used in the human-computer interface to provide information and feedback about some computer object, operation, or interaction. Utilizing the notion of musical dissonance earcons were designed that vary as to their degree of aural disagreeableness along a rank order scale. It is hypothesized that in the context of IT exception messages earcons with a higher degree of musical dissonance (aural disagreeableness) would be perceived as communicating a higher degree of hazard associated with the underlying computing problem signaled by an exception message. Participants rated the degree of hazard of each earcon presented in a random order in an experiment. Results of the data analysis indicate partial support of the hypothesis. The implications are that it may be possible to increase the degree of hazard matching in IT environments by designing earcons that accompany exception messages to communicate different levels of perceived hazard of an underlying computer problem.
| Item Type: | Monograph (Working Paper) |
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| Publisher’s Statement: | Copyright, where appropriate, is held by the author. |
| ID number or DOI: | 10-03 |
| Keywords: | Working paper, musical dissonance, error messages, hazard matching |
| Subjects: | Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA76 Computer software |
| NAU Depositing Author Academic Status: | Faculty/Staff |
| Department/Unit: | The W.A. Franke College of Business |
| Date Deposited: | 17 Oct 2015 20:38 |
| URI: | http://openknowledge.nau.edu/id/eprint/1500 |
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