A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement studies how engine calibrators listen for knock alongside the pressure trace, and tests a sonified display beside them.
Calibration engineers hear knock coming before the trace confirms it, and a new tone helps the newest of them
Eleven engineers, three test facilities and a great many careful spark-timing sweeps sit behind An Ear on the Cylinder, the newest paper from the School of Continuous Improvement. Its authors, Dr Dagny Okafor, Lecturer and Convenor of Evaluation of Evaluation, Dr Mirela Hanke, Postdoctoral Fellow and Deputy Convenor of the Living Dashboard, and Ms Edda Nwafor, Doctoral Candidate, sat in the control rooms where engines are calibrated and asked how the people at the desk decide that an engine has begun to knock.
We went in to study a screen and spent most of our time listening to a room. The School has not yet decided what to make of that, and is in no particular hurry to.
— Dr Dagny Okafor, Lecturer and Convenor, Evaluation of Evaluation
The paper brings contextual inquiry and interaction design to bear on a long-standing engineering practice, surfacing the role of the trained ear alongside established instrumentation and situating it within the shared, taught work of the control room. A companion study introduces Undertone, a sonified display that lays a quiet tone beneath the sound of the cell, and explores how practitioners at different stages of their careers take it up. Across nine participants calling onset on recorded sweeps, adding sound brought their calls earlier and closer together.
“The Living Dashboard will be giving some thought to its volume control,” said Dr Hanke.
The paper extends the University’s continuing attention to the instruments people keep within reach while they work, and to the people who keep them.
The full paper is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.i8hjc6.