As our personal computing devices get ever smaller, it gets harder and harder to fit information onto their screens. One solution to this growing problem is the use of auditory or sound-based interfaces for representing information.

In our day-to-day lives, we process complex layering, mapping, and placement of sounds to make sense of the world around us. Yet, in our applications, this crucial sensory experience has been reduced to non-descript alarms. Our research challenges this paradigm and looks optimistically at the current migration from the desktop to the small mobile device as an opportunity to challenge and re-think the visual interface.

This talk discusses in detail the usability testing, research, and prototyping conducted with members of the blind community in Manhattan over the past year in a search for a purely auditory interface for the common data of the personal calendar.