HoloBand is a clinical tool for audiovisual music perception training in augmented reality (AR) using the Microsoft Hololens 2, for hard of hearing individuals.
Through an exploratory research approach, a user-centered iterative process was used to conceptualize and develop the prototype, with a speech and language pathologist focused on music perception and a musically adept hard of hearing individual.
The developed application was used to conduct a focus group session with speech and language pathologists (n=6) from Rigshospitalet. Via an inductive thematic analysis, we interpret that AR HMDs have appropriate contextual visual capabilities to enhance music perception training. However, closer integration to clinical workflow and a goal-oriented and task-based approach was found suitable to bring real-life scenarios to the clinical setting.
HoloBand consists of two interfaces: a spatial environment in AR for the hard of hearing user, and a secondary computer interface used to control the training session. The prototype facilitates musical timbre discrimination, audio localisation, and pitch recognition.
