Introduction to the Special Issue on Sonic Information Design: Theory, Methods, and Practice, Part 1

The term auditory display was coined in the 1950s by Pollack and Ficks (1954), who were experimenting with auditory versions of the visual cockpit displays to improve pilot performance. Auditory display research moved to the computer in the 1980s, where human–computer interaction researchers investigated how sounds could enable visually impaired users to access digital data; they coined the term data sonification to refer to auditory versions of data visualizations on the computer screen. In 1992 the interest in auditory interfaces led Gregory Kramer to organize the first International Conference on Auditory Display (Kramer, 1994), which established canonical techniques such as earcons, auditory icons, audification, and parameter mapping.