Blurb:
This talk presents Soundscape Experience Mapping (SEM), a method combining ecological momentary assessment (EMA) with deep listening practices to capture how older adults experience their home soundscapes. Drawing on our 2025 Forum Acusticum paper, I'll walk through the living lab study we conducted in Belgium, where eight older adults (56-76) documented their acoustic experiences over one week using smartphone-based EMA tasks, continuous AudioMoth recording, and cultural probes. Findings illustrate how personal control over sound environments shapes wellbeing, how situational factors influence perception, and how daily routines create meaningful acoustic anchors. The talk also reviews the practical considerations of EMA approaches (e.g., deployment, participant burden, compliance variability, and working bi-lingually). Beyond the published paper, I'll highlight other ways soundscape research has utilised EMA, AI-based speech removal for privacy-preserving datasets, how sound event detection data can reconstruct activity profiles of the home, and design proposals emerging from the co-creation workshops with our Belgian participants.
Bio:
Dr Thomas Deacon is a Research Fellow in Design Research for Sound Sensing on the AI for Sound project at the University of Surrey's Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing. He holds a PhD in Media and Arts Technology from Queen Mary University of London. His research focuses on participatory methods for understanding how people experience and interact with sound technologies, including work on indoor soundscapes, spatial audio, and AI-assisted acoustic systems. Prior to Surrey, Thomas worked on Extended Reality and Spatial Audio at the Royal College of Art and as a user experience researcher at the VR startup Gravity Sketch.
How to sign up
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Registration will close Tuesday 2 December 9am
CPD will be available after the event.
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