Working with audio

Abstract

Audio data is rarely used on desktop computers today, although audio is otherwise widely used for communication tasks. This paper describes early work aimed at creating computer tools that support the ways users may want to work with audio data. User needs for the system were determined by intervieweing people already working with audio data, using existing devices such as portable tape recorders. A preliminary prototype system – consisting of a personal tape recorder for recording and simultaneously marking audio and a Macintosh application for browsing these recordings – was built. Informal field user tests of this prototype system have indicated areas for improvement and directions for future work.