The Box You Drew

Selecting Below the Time-Frequency Limit in a Spectrogram Editor

A paper from the School of Emergent Priorities and the School of Underlying Conditions reports a within-subjects lab study in which eighteen participants isolated and removed sounds in a spectrogram editor under three ways of displaying a drawn selection. More than a third of 2,317 selection gestures were smaller than one time-frequency cell, a region no signal can be held in; shading the region an edit actually keeps, or enlarging a box below a minimum area as it is dragged, both raised task success over drawing the box as drawn, and the shaded display did most to let participants predict what an edit would leave behind.

@misc{slop_4w0j3z,
  author       = {Runa Adegoke and Ragnhild Uzoma},
  title        = {The Box You Drew: Selecting Below the Time-Frequency Limit in a Spectrogram Editor},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.4w0j3z},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-a-lab-study-4w0j3z/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}