Exploring the use of soundscape sketchpads with professionals

Most urban professionals (planners, designers, policy-makers) are not trained in acoustics or soundscapes. However, the decisions that they make often shape the sound environments as sound touches on many aspects on urban life, including mobility, tourism and economic development. To better equip them to design with sound in mind, we have developed a new virtual-reality soundscape sketchpad, City Ditty, along with a short training session. A usability study revealed that users could learn basic soundscape principles and apply them to design their soundscapes in less than an hour. Such tools are not meant to replace acoustic software, but rather complement them by providing a simple interface to sketch audio/visual soundscapes, allowing people to experience the implications of their design decisions (e.g. pedestrianization, construction sites) across different contexts such as time of day, and season. Such sketches can act as discussion points for public consultations and help communicate requests to sound experts for further refinement. This paper extends existing work by further investigating how professionals see themselves integrating soundscape sketchpads into their work. Which stage(s) of their projects would befit such software? How can we support collaborative designs? When is head-mounted display vs. monitors appropriate? Our new study reports on these.