Smart Active Noise Canceling for Work and Education

Contacts: Sabrina Burtscher

If you would like to participate, please send an email to smart-ANC∂lists.kit.edu

Important: This is the second phase of this study. In the first phase, our participants were primarily students or office workers. Please provide a short description of your current position in your initial message, e.g., care work, homemaking, trade, industry, ...

Normal Active Noise Canceling reduces all kinds of sounds the same way. We have collaborated to develop a smartphone application that can filter specific sounds and noises. Now we want to test whether the application and headphones are usable and useful.

Focused Noise Canceling can help with:

  • Chatting with others, for example in restaurants
  • Focusing on work, for example on a train
  • Filtering unpleasant sounds and noises, for example traffic noise

We want to find out whether our solution works well.

 

Study process:

  1. You send an email to smart-ANC∂lists.kit.edu , asking us to contact you for the study. Please provide a short description of your current position in your initial message, e.g., care work, homemaking, trade, industry, ...
  2. We send you some information materials and legal documents so you can make an informed decision about participating. The documents are also available in simplified language, like this text.
  3. We arrange a time and date for a meeting. This meeting takes place in Karlsruhe in our office. The location is at KIT Campus Süd, at Adenauerring. Our offices are well connected to public transport (train, tram, bus), and also good to reach by car.
  4. During the appointment, you get to use the headphones and the app. We will ask you to complete some tasks. It is not important how you perform on these tasks.
    You can ask questions at any time during the appointment.
  5. At the end, we will conduct a „semi-structured interview“. That means that we will ask you about your experience, what worked well, and what should be changed.
     

What you can expect:

  • We want to find out if the app works for you.
  • The interview will take about 45-60 minutes.
  • Appointments will take place between 4th and 15th of June 2026. Appointments on the weekends and on holidays are possible.
  • The language of the study is German or English, whichever you prefer.
  • The interview will be recorded and put into writing. The recording and the transcript will be stored on secure servers. The transcript will be pseudonymized. After evaluation is complete, the recordings will be deleted. It will not be possible to identify you personally from publications.
  • You will receive €10 remuneration after completing the interview.