Legacy – The Question

In Unit 3, my research question was, ‘How can we increase noise literacy of urban residents by optimising the channels of information dissemination?’ This question stems from the general neglect of noise issues by urban residents. Even though noise pollution is recognised as a serious factor affecting the quality of urban life, many residents still fail to take adequate measures and lack a basic perception of the noise problem.

I used hypothesis induction to explore this phenomenon at this stage and identified ‘lack of noise literacy’ as a key contributing factor. Specifically, urban residents are not well informed about the sources of noise, its potential impacts, and effective coping strategies. In addition, methodological limitations have led me to overlook other related causal factors, a bias that has led early research to focus on ‘lack of noise literacy’.

As a result, early interventions focused on redesigning information dissemination channels to address the problem and help urban residents improve their awareness of and ability to cope with noise.

Legacy – Interventions

Noise Library (primary intervention):

The Noise Library is an interactive information platform similar to Wikipedia. Users can search, listen, and learn about the characteristics of specific noise sources and strategies to control them. The platform also allows users to create new entries and upload noise samples.

Noise Sample Collection Project (sub-intervention):

An HTML5-based webapp that allows users to upload noise samples to the Noise Library via a mobile phone or computer browser, with the aim of building an early sample library.

The link of Webapp: https://www.noiselibrary.net

Noise Colouring Project (sub-intervention):

The TNoise Colouring Project, derived from audio processing techniques in the mixing industry, is an exploratory new idea for noise control. Instead of directly applying traditional noise filtering methods, this intervention uses algorithms and equipment to transform the noisy parts of the soundscape into no longer bothersome melodic components, thus avoiding soundscape deficiencies.