Hi Dominique
Much appreciate your notes on Soundcape and I downloaded it asap. Tried the
demo beacon setup and the last one the haptonic I think has a voice when
pointing the phone in the right direction or otherwise vibrates. The other
options could be too intrusive beeping all the time. Still need to test
walk with it. Thands again.
John
On Fri, 8 Sept 2023 at 13:47, Dominique Farrell <dominiqueafarrell@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
After last week's exciting announcement about the new Soundscape Community
app from NCBI IA labs and its partners, we are going to discover some use
cases for the app and the different ways some people use it.
If you have not heard of Soundscape, it is an app you can download on your
iPhone that helps you explore and learn your surroundings using 3D spatial
sound.
It calls out streets and intersections and you can create Markers and you
can even follow an audio beacon for navigation to a destination.
Personally, the way I use it is strictly as a Points of interest finder or
if you prefer to describe it as finding out what places I am passing as I
walk by them. I use a pair of AirPods Pro in transparency mode, this allows
outside sounds into the airpods for safety while listening to announcements
from the Soundscape Community app.
In my small town, I rarely use it because I know it so well but when I go
to
a bigger town or city, I like to know what I am passing by. So, if I am in
Kilkenny or Dublin City, I will turn it on and listen, shops and points of
interest will be called out. The ones on my left will be announced in my
left ear and you might have guessed the ones on my right are announced in
my
right ear. This gives me a great sense of awareness of what's around me and
it is also great for letting me know when I am passing little service roads
and intersections.
Soundscape also has a feature called an Audio Beacon which you can attach
to
a specific location nearby and walk to it. The beacon makes a changing
sound
as you walk to the destination. You can also make this sound give you
haptic
feedback if you prefer. Some people love this type of guidance.
Personally, I do not find the audio beacon useful it does not suit my way
of
listening, when I am navigating, I prefer spoken directions from an app
like
Apple Maps. But my colleague David on the other hand uses them quite
extensively.
David uses beacons in many different ways. When walking to a location for
the first time he'll set a beacon on the destination, pointing his phone in
different directions and following the sound. While it won't get you to the
door 100% of the time, this is a nice way to get close enough to a location
so you can be spotted or ask for assistance.
Another use David found for beacons was as an alert for getting off a bus.
Let's say you need to get off at a certain stop. You can put a beacon on a
shop nearby, and listen as the distance to the beacon decreases, bringing
you closer to your stop. Soundscape isn't built for this and David has said
he'd like to see optimisations to better support this use case, but it goes
to show you can be creative with how you use the app.
David and I in many ways live quite similar lives, but we use Soundscape in
completely different ways. There are people using Soundscape for everything
from basic navigation to canoeing, which in many ways is a testament to its
versatility.
Download Soundscape Community on the App Store at:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/soundscape-community/id6449701760.
NCBI Technology News.
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