Development of auditory design guidelines for improving learning on mobile phones

• A total of ten auditory guidelines were developed and validated for improving m-learning.
• Three for auditory-only design, four for attention design, and three for personalization design were developed.
• Auditory design guidelines were developed and revised using an iterative educational design research process.
• The auditory design guidelines was validated using three methods: expert reviews, usability evaluation and field evaluation.

Although auditory information in mobile learning (m-learning) can be an important resource for delivering knowledge and information, the importance of guidelines for designing auditory instructions has largely been overlooked. Therefore, this study considered the characteristics of m-learning, mobility and personalization, with the aim of developing and validating auditory design guidelines to improve learning on mobile phones. The present study covers m-learning with cellphones only. Auditory design guidelines were developed and revised using an iterative educational design research process. The auditory design guidelines were developed by analyzing previous studies related to m-learning and auditory interface design, and revised using three validation methods. The expert reviews and usability evaluations were conducted as an internal validation method, and a field evaluation was used as an external validation method to confirm the feasibility and educational effects. The results showed that the auditory design guidelines could be applied effectively to the design of audio instructions delivered on smart phones. Finally, a total of ten guidelines were developed, three for auditory-only design, four for attention design, and three for personalization design. This paper discusses the theoretical, empirical and practical aspects of the design guidelines presented.