Fermata: An Auditory Calendar Application

MICROSOFT RESEARCH'S DESIGN EXPO 2005
Each year, Microsoft Research sponsors a Design Challenge and invites students from 6 universities around the world to design a technology product in response to a chosen theme. In 2005 the chosen theme was "Time: Organizing, Remembering, Sharing." As a result, we explored and researched time and calendar systems and came to the conclusion that the applications that have made their way on to our PC's and mobile devices are visually complex and/or inadequate and are often confusing. In order to explore these systems from a different perspective, we decided to drop visual interfaces from our exploration of time and instead focus on auditory interfaces.

TEAM

	David Yates David is an Interaction Designer and Application Developer who has worked for the last ten years in both interactive and traditional media.

	Michael Jefferson Michael is a producer and designer of stories and experiences. He has a Bachelors degree in Communications from the University of Massachusetts and thirteen years of experience in creating content for broadcast television, streaming media, interactive television and the web.

	Spencer Kiser Spencer is a sound designer specializing in creating interactive sound devices and applications. His recent projects include a device that controls video games with music and a color-tracking turntable sequencer.

We'd like to extend special thanks to Doria Fan, Jamie Allen and Mauricio Melo for their help and support.