SonoUno development: a User-Centered Sonification software for data analysis

Abstract

In general, people think about information and nature based on a visual approach, but if we goback to our childhood and try to understand the world through our different senses, a new wayof understanding the information arises. Sonification is a technique that uses non-speach audioto translate data into sound and it is a commonly-used approach to exploring astrophysical datathrough sensory inputs. This field has grown continuously over the recent years, especially since1992 with the start of the International Community for Auditory Display (ICAD) conferences.In this contribution, a sonification software, sonoUno, and its application in astronomy arepresented, without neglecting the analysis possibilities for data from various disciplines. Themain distinguishing features of the development presented here are: it is user-centered fromthe beginning, with several contacts with end users along the design and a focus group test; itseeks a way to bring autonomy to its functionally-diverse users; and it presents a simple firstframework, with the mathematical operations and settings in the menu. A description of thesoftware and some cases of use are presented.