Tangoscope: A tangible audio device for tabletop interaction

Abstract

Tabletop installations allow multiple users to playback digital media simultaneously. With public speakers, however, simultaneous auditory content gets superimposed, leading to a confusing and disturbing user experience. In this paper, we present Tangoscope, a tangible audio output device for tabletop interaction. As we augmented headphones with a visual marker-based identification mechanism, with the Tangoscope each user is provided with individual auditory content. To allow for an instruction-free and intuitive usage of the audio device we employed the metaphor of a real stethoscope. A first user study indicated the self-explaining use of the Tangoscope. © 2011 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.