Hello! I'm delighted to share with you our most recent research, which engages people
with the sounds of the wild and features this guy. [Jessie points] An eastern bristlebird.
Eastern bristlebirds are rare and they're hard to see. And, the population where I live,
in Queensland Australia, lives among these tall tussocks grasses,
which makes them really hard to find. We can find them, however, if we know how to listen for them.
I spent two years learning calls using recordings of captive birds first. So,
you can imagine how excited I was when I first heard their calls in the wild. That's the picture
you see here. And I'd like to introduce you to one of those calls. [a bird call plays]
Isn't it beautiful? Music to my ears! Well, audio recordings are pretty easy to gather.
As long as you can get to that rugged habitat. But making sense of the audio, after you have it,
is the real challenge. We don't have a lot of knowledge about the calls of bristlebirds, which
makes it extra difficult. I'd like to introduce you to another sound [second bird call playing]
Now, when we get audio recordings the fantastic benefit is that we have visualizations of sound
as well. Have a look at the shape in that, what we call a spectrogram. And see if you can recognize,
when I play it again, what that call sounds like and looks like. [call playing a second time]
So, we informed the design of the Bristle Whistle Challenge
by our prior work in the lab. We designed and playtested a prototype,
as part of this paper. It includes mixed activities. Including gameful, meaning
structured and goal-oriented tasks. And playful, meaning free-form and exploratory activities.
This was intended to inform the design of nature engagement and conservation-focused citizen
science. One of the features of the Bristle Whistle Challenge was that participants were
receiving guidance by a conversational agent. As you see here, highlighted,
that was Bob the bristlebird. He gave various comments throughout the entire Challenge, to
assist people. And this provided sensemaking and emotional support. The gamefully matching of media
was actually quite engaging for people when they were looking at spectrograms and audio.
Or, matching the different photographs to specific calls of particular species. It helped to home in
attention on the calls of the birds. The playfully exploring media included
looking at photographs, and spectrograms, and listening to the calls as well,
but without any particular tasks. It also included imagining what people might see
as creative shapes in the spectrograms of calls. Do you see that flower shape in there? Like I do?
Well, these types of activities piqued interest and elicited creativity in our participants.
Then, we explored how they might apply what they learned to quest for calls that they were meant
to identify in unfamiliar spectrograms. It actually proved to be very useful
providing them all that variety of context ahead of time for identifying particular birds.
And they enjoyed the experiences. It also revealed sensory and animal preference differences,
which was quite interesting. And we recommended diverse design directions because, really,
this is a tip of the iceberg. We need a lot more work to be done for creative and contextual audio
encounters to build awareness of nature's wonders and saving species. We invite you to read the
paper, view the Challenge [in a supplementary video], and be sure and sing out for more
info. Get involved in helping us save species, by designing in ways that resonate with diverse
audiences. So that everyone can get involved. And with that, thank you very much for listening.