HomeSound

Project Description

The home is filled with a rich diversity of sounds from mundane beeps and whirs to dog barks and children’s shouts. In this project, we examine how deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) people think about and relate to sounds in the home, solicit feedback and reactions to initial domestic sound awareness systems, and explore potential concerns. We present findings from two qualitative studies: in Study 1, 12 DHH participants discussed their perceptions of and experiences with sound in the home and provided feedback on initial sound awareness mockups. Informed by Study 1, we designed three tablet-based sound awareness prototypes, which we evaluated with 10 DHH participants using a Wizard-of-Oz approach. Together, our findings suggest a general interest in smarthome-based sound awareness systems particularly for displaying contextually aware, personalized and glanceable visualizations but key concerns arose related to privacy, activity tracking, cognitive overload, and trust.

Publications

Sound Sensing and Feedback Techniques for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People

UW CS PhD Dissertation 2022

keywords: sound visualization, sound awareness, sound localization, sound classification, sound recognition, sound sensing

PDF | doi | Citation | AR Captioning • HoloSound • Personalizing Sound Recognition • ProtoSound • HomeSound • SoundWatch • GlassEar

HomeSound: An Iterative Field Deployment of an In-Home Sound Awareness System for Deaf or Hard of Hearing Users

Dhruv Jain, Kelly Mack, Akli Amrous, Steven Goodman, Matt Wright, Leah Findlater, Jon E. Froehlich

Proceedings of CHI 2020 | Acceptance Rate: 24.3% (760 / 3126)

keywords: accessibility, deaf, deaf and hard of hearing, smarthome

PDF | doi | Citation | HomeSound

Exploring Sound Awareness in the Home for People who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing

Dhruv Jain, Angela Carey Lin, Marcus Amalachandran, Aileen Zeng, Jon E. Froehlich

Proceedings of CHI 2019 | Acceptance Rate: 23.7% (701 / 2960)

keywords: sound visualization, iot, sound awareness, deaf and hard of hearing, smarthome

PDF | doi | Citation | HomeSound

We design, build, and evaluate new interactive tools and techniques to address pressing societal challenges. Makeability refers both to how our technological innovations make new abilities possible for humans as well as our educational mission to help students gain new abilities as they learn and grow through research, invention, and human-centered design.