Abstract
Notification System is a system which provides extra information used when users are doing tasking. The information provided by Notification System can help users decide or plan their future work. There are various types of Notification System applied now, such as Instant Messaging System, Stock Quotes Notification, System Mornitoring, Alarm system and so on. Among these systems, Instant Messaging System can let users talk to each other, and exchange files. However, it probably influences users original performance because users have to shift their working surroundings between their original work (main work) and Instant Messaging System. In application, Instant Messaging System uses visual and auditory notification to notify users new messages. Many scholars study the relationship between the function of visual notification and users’ performance with different visual notifications. However, there is only few study of the design of auditory notification to understand its efficacy. Therefore, the study aims at the influence of different auditory notifications of Instant Messaging System on users’ performances. The author design four different ways of auditory notifications: vision, vision and monotonous sounds, vision and responding sounds, as well as vision and speech sounds. In this study, the testees’ main work is to surf homepages to find out the answers to the twenty questions of information search. While testees do the main work, the four inetrfaces have different notifying messages to notify subjects to carry out subordinate work. Forty-nine college students are divided into four groups of different visual and auditory notifications randomly. The study reveals that effect of the notification of monotonous sounds is not good. The notification of speech sounds which notify the meaning of the message can promote the effect of the main work, information search Expressing messages of different meanings with the auditory notification of iconic mapping can promote the accuracy of the main work. The suggestions of the study can be provided to developers of Instant Messaging System as a basis of designing systems.