Sounds such as co-workers chatting nearby or a dripping faucet help us maintain awareness of and respond to our surroundings. Without a tool that communicates ambient sounds in a non-auditory manner, maintaining this awareness is difficult for people who are deaf. We present an iterative investigation of peripheral, visual displays of ambient sounds. Our major contributions are: (1) a rich understanding of what ambient sounds are useful to people who are deaf, (2) a set of visual and functional requirements for a peripheral sound display, based on feedback from people who are deaf, (3) lab-based evaluations investigating the characteristics of four prototypes, and (4) a set of design guidelines for successful ambient audio displays, based on a comparison of four implemented prototypes and user feedback. Our work provides valuable information about the sound awareness needs of the deaf and can help to inform further design of such applications.

We developed two visual displays for providing awareness of environmental audio to deaf individuals. Based on fieldwork with deaf and hearing participants, we focused on supporting awareness of non-speech audio sounds such as ringing phones and knocking in a work environment. Unlike past work, our designs support both monitoring and notification of sounds, support discovery of new sounds, and do not require a priori knowledge of sounds to be detected. Our Spectrograph design shows pitch and amplitude, while our Positional Ripples design shows amplitude and location of sounds. A controlled experiment involving deaf participants found neither display to be significantly distracting. However, users preferred the Positional Ripples display and found that display easier to monitor (notification sounds were detected with 90% success in a laboratory setting). The Spectrograph display also supported successful detection in most cases, and was well received when deployed in the field.