About these examples

This site was created by Glenn Brauen to provide a brief overview of some examples from past research. If you have questions, please see the contact page .

This site links to an archive of videos created while I was studying sound design for web maps at Carleton University, supported by the Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre , the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies , and Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council .

During my studies, I examined possibilities for using sound in interactive web maps — audiovisual cartography — looking for guidance from design approaches in existing and emerging media, including studies of: 1) the types of problems to which interactive and animated cartography had been applied and how sound might complement the representation metaphors in those forms; 2) models of sound design from film and interactive games; and 3) trends and changes that were occurring in how media and, in particular, digital maps could be understood and used.

As part of this research, I built an audio playback and control subsystem to work with software architectures and user interface implementations for web maps. I wrote the software while working on a variety of atlas projects, developing ideas for sound use in parallel with figuring out what the software could do. Finally, I conducted initial usability tests of some of my early prototypes and, by the time I defended my thesis, applied lessons from those in the creation of later prototypes, such as “Canada-US Commodity Trade, 1976-2000,” shown in the examples .

Unfortunately, by the time I was completing my thesis, Java applets, upon which a major component of the sound subsystem was based, were being severely restricted by browser security policies. Furthermore, it was clear that support for them would be removed entirely from major browsers in the future (now, well in the past!). None of these maps function properly now. An audio system to provide similar capabilities could almost certainly be built using the web audio API as a base standard. There may even be implementations around that could be adapted for use with web maps. To my knowledge, no one has looked into doing this yet.

Fortunately, I created screen capture videos of most of my prototypes for use in presentations and for inclusion with my thesis. These are linked from the main page .