Recommendations to Develop, Distribute and Market Sonification Apps
This addresses the problem of underutilized sonification in consumer technology for developers and end-users, but it is incremental as it builds on existing research without major breakthroughs.
The paper tackled the low public adoption of sonification by developing and promoting Tiltification, a smartphone app that uses sonification as a torpedo level, resulting in strategies to increase awareness and provide recommendations for similar apps.
After decades of research, sonification is still rarely adopted in consumer electronics, software and user interfaces. Outside the science and arts scenes the term sonification seems not well known to the public. As a means of science communication, and in order to make software developers, producers of consumer electronics and end users aware of sonification, we developed, distributed, and promoted Tiltification. This smartphone app utilizes sonification to inform users about the tilt angle of their phone, so that they can use it as a torpedo level. In this paper we report on our app development, distribution and promotion strategies and reflect on their success in making the app in particular, and sonification in general, better known to the public. Finally, we give recommendations on how to develop, distribute and market sonification apps. This article is dedicated to research institutions without commercial interests.