One of the major projects at the Multimodal Interaction Lab at McGill University was “Sounds in the City”, a collaborative effort with the City of Montreal to position Montreal as a leader in urban noise management and soundscape by connecting research and practice. During my experience at the lab, I wrote my honours thesis and helped to facilitate user testing and data analysis for a Sounds in the City pilot study, “City Ditty: An Immersive Soundscape Sketchpad for Professionals of the Built Environment.”
PublicationUrban design professionals lack the appropriate soundscape design knowledge and resources to incorporate soundscape principles within their design process.
Although soundscape in the design of urban public spaces is critical for creating a beneficial user experience, there exists a research-practice gap in which urban design professionals lack the appropriate soundscape design knowledge and resources to incorporate soundscape principles within their design process. This may relegate the factor of sound as an afterthought, resulting in many costly and time-consuming retroactive solutions to minimize sound levels and noise pollution.
An immersive sound planning tool to allow urban design professionals to proactively learn about and consider soundscape during their design process.
The creation of this soundscape design tool would serve to reduce the burden of setting aside the time outside of a typical urban design professional schedule to participate in a workshop, as the tool would integrate soundscape principles to facilitate real-time knowledge transfer during the actual design process. PhD(c) Richard Yanaky designed the tool, while I helped to facilitate usability testing, created the exit interview script, wrote code for data analysis in R, and analyzed the quantitative data for writeup.
Yanaky et al. 2020
After the research-practice gap between soundscape research and implementation was identified and an interest in a sound-planning tool was established in a workshop held in July 2019, Yanaky et al. (2020) established 7 user requirements for an immersive sound-planning tool.
To formalize the process, I reviewed all 36 usability and learning tasks presented to the users during testing to align them with these requirements and Cerwén et al. (2017) soundscape principles below.
Yanaky et al. 2022
We recruited six non-professionals for usability testing of the first iteration of the soundscape tool. Five participants had a familiarity with urban planning and soundscape. The sixth participant was recruited to serve as an external evaluator of the tool, as they held no background in urban nor soundscape design and software tools of this nature.
Usability Tasks
36 self-guided tasks that incorporated soundscape design principles and user requirements were presented to the user after introduction to the software. The first 29 tasks oriented users to menu functionalities (e.g., how to change the time of day and weather, how to move and rotate objects, etc.), and the last 7 tasks allowed participants to explore the user interface more freely (e.g., investigate a virtual environment and improve the sound design). After each task, a pop-up menu with a 5-point Likert scale to was presented so users could record the ease of task completion.
Usability Action Logs
I wrote out R programming code to document every time the user clicked ona certain button, slider, or toggle during a specific task.
User Engagement Scale
A 13-item modified version of O’Brien et al.’s (2018) User Engagement Scale shortform (UES-SF) questionnaire was administered to measure participants’ engagement while using the simulator.
Exit Interviews
Catherine and I created a short exit interview with guide consisting of open-ended questions based on answers to the user engagement questionnaire. After the usability tasks, I imported all quantitative data (Likert Scale, Usability Action Logs, UES-SF responses) to identify any recorded issues during the session in order to further detail participants’ experiences.
Yanaky et al. 2022
Usability Tasks
All six participants were able to complete the 36 usability tasks. Using the Likert usability ratings per task, observational findings, and click data, I grouped the tasks that were marked with difficulty under two themes.
Object Placement: TASKS 15, 16, 20, 25, 26
A lot of the issues stemmed from issues with rotating objects, changing object elevation, and editing objects after placement. Observations from these tasks indicate that it may be more intuitive for users to click on objects directly to modify as well as drag and drop items from the ‘Add Object’ menu instead of using a separate ‘Place Sound Object Here’ button for all sound sources.
Task Instructions: TASKS 15, 22, 28, 31, 33, 35
While users were able to navigate the majority of user interface elements, these tasks indicated that there could be improvement made in terms of the "Save" and "New Save" buttons.
User Engagement Scale
The survey responses indicated that there could be some improvement to the engagement, as two participants responded that they felt frustrated when using some aspects of the tool, and none of the aspects of the User Engagement Scale hit ceiling levels. Improving these scores is important, as a higher UES score is correlated with both sustained and re-engagement, both of which can induce the continual use of this product alongside urban design professionals’ existing workplace routines.
Fulfillment of User Requirements
The tool satisfies user requirements 2, 3 and 7, as it allows users to visualize sounds and provides an environment that was realistic enough for users to navigate through and complete tasks. However, requirements 1 and 4 were not completely satisfied as there must be revisions made for object placement. Future iterations of the tool can improve on 1 and 4, as well as 6, so urban planners can import designs into the sonic environment.
In the future...
The usability testing and analysis described in this paper is one phase in the design of an immersive sound-planning tool that fulfills all user requirements. Once a tool that fulfills all user requirements is created in both desktop and VR format, it can be evaluated in the second phase of this iterative process using an urban design professional population. In this second phase of testing, the Sounds in the City team can ultimately investigate if the tool serves as a feasible solution for minimizing the research-practice gap that exists between researchers and urban design professionals when it comes to the field of soundscape design.
What I learned
My experience as an honors research assistant at the MIL during my final year at McGill University was an incredible introduction to the realm of user experience design. Not only did I acquire essential skills in quantitative data analysis through conducting and analyzing user tests, surveys, and interviews, but I also had the opportunity to collaborate with a multidisciplinary team on a project with real-world implications. Furthermore, learning about the user engagement model outlined by O’Brien and Toms (2008) emphasized the significance of considering the longevity of a product and striving for its sustained engagement and adoption within existing workflows. I am truly grateful for the guidance and support provided by Richard Yananky and Dr. Catherine Guastavino throughout this rewarding experience.