Handbook on Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing

Designing Multi-Sensory Displays for Mobile Devices

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It is of course important to remember that each property has unique characteristics that need to be

considered. Two important factors are whether the properties have an ordering and how well we

can distinguish between different categories of a property.

Sensory properties such as hue and timbre do not have a natural ordering (low to high), while

other properties such as saturation (less to more), surface texture (smooth to rough), and pitch (low

to high) are perceived in an ordered way. If you want to display unordered information, then an

unordered property such as timbre or hue is probably a better choice. Similarly if your information

has some ordering, then an ordered sensory property would ...