Can audio help navigating in virtual environments? An experimental evaluation

The concept of Interaction Locus (IL) has been introduced to help the users to orient, navigate, and identify relevant interaction areas in 3D Virtual Environments (VE). The IL is a multimodal concept: it adds to the 3D visual scene parallel information channels that are perceived by other senses. In particular, the IL emphasizes the role of music as a navigation aid in a VE. The paper reports two experimental evaluations of the audio component of the IL, as implemented in the web site of a famous Italian Museum. The experiments investigated the different roles (functional or aesthetic) that a music component may play in VE navigation and content fruition. Results suggest that music plays an aesthetic role that the users appreciate very much. It can also play a functional role, helping users to recognise scenes in a VE, provided that the users are informed in advance of the semantic linkage between music and virtual space.