Examining Narrative Sonification: Using First-Person Retrospection Methods to Translate Radio Production to Interaction Design

Abstract

We present a first-person, retrospective exploration of two radio sonification pieces that employ narrative scaffolding to teach audiences how to listen to data. To decelerate and articulate design processes that occurred at the rapid pace of radio production, the sound designer and producer wrote retrospective design accounts. We then revisited the radio pieces through principles drawn from guidance design, data storytelling, visualization literacy, and sound studies. Finally, we speculated how these principles might be applied through interactive, voice-based technologies. First-person methods enabled us to access the implicit knowledge embedded in radio production and translate it to technologies of interest to the human–computer-interaction community, such as voice user interfaces that rely on auditory display. Traditionally, sonification practitioners have focused more on generating sounds than on teaching people how to listen; our process, however, treated sound and narrative as a holistic, sonic-narrative experience. Our first-person retrospection illuminated the role of narrative in designing to support people as they learn to listen to data.