Vocate: auditory interfaces for location-based services

This paper discusses work being carried out by the Vocate module of the LOK8 project. The LOK8 project seeks to develop locationbased services within intelligent social environments, such as museums, art galleries, office buildings, and so on. It seeks to do this using a wide range of media and devices employing multiple modalities. The Vocate module is responsible for the auditory aspect of the LOK8 environment and will seek to exploit the natural strengths afforded by the auditory modality to make the LOK8 system user-friendly in multiple scenarios, including instances where the user needs to be hands-free or eyes-free, or when screen size on a mobile device might be an issue. We look at what kinds of services the Vocate module will be seeking to implement within the LOK8 environment and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of three possible approaches- sonification, auditory user interfaces, and speech interfaces.