NSF Award
9909166
PI/Institution: Richard Lyon, R.H. Lyon Corp.<br/>Proposal Number: 9909166<br/>Title: Mapping Perceptual Attributes of Sound to Product Design Choices<br/><br/><br/>This Small Grant for Exploratory Research (SGER) project entails study of consumer preference for product sound with the goal of establishing a language or vocabulary to map consumer preferences for product sound that is appropriate for use by product designers to achieve a preferred sound. At present there is no structured process available for acoustic engineers to use to relate consumer sound preferences to product engineering design goals. The process used in this study for understanding and quantifying product sounds build on the methods of listening panels (jury tests) that are in common use in psychoacoustics. As opposed to the content free stimuli (clicks, tones, random noise) intended to avoid the complexities of cognitive content in the stimuli, this study uses an expert panel to explore a variety of sounds attributes and develop descriptors appropriate for establishing a "language of sound" appropriate for machine sounds. The PI then will correlate sound descriptors to source attributes and develop physical metrics of stimuli that can provide engineers meaningful product design input. New tools developed from an understanding of sound perception attributes as proposed provides the foundation for establishing a set of tools that product designers can use to achieve preferred product sound attributes.
