Abstract

{johan.vanbalken, sander.vanwijngaarden} @ tno.nl In the ship control centre of the Air Defence and Command Frigates of the Royal Netherlands Navy, auditory warnings are used to indicate critical system conditions and dangerous situations. By means of subjective experiments, the suitability of the applied auditory warnings was assessed, and possible improvements were evaluated. It appeared that for one of the most urgent warning conditions (platform alarm) a less suitable auditory signal was applied, the perceived urgency of which is relatively low, while it is also easily confused with other signals. A straightforward way to modify the perceived urgency (through manipulation of the signal inter-onset interval) was derived from the experimental results. Auditory warning signals are intended to draw the attention of somebody (user, operator, driver, pilot,…) to a certain event. A wide range of auditory warning signals have been designed for an equally wide variety of applications, some serving their purpose better than others. Several guidelines for designing auditory warnings have been reported previously (e.g. [1]). Some

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