Visualization in annotation tool

[auroracramer]

Spinning off an issue from #8:

One question though: do we really want to show spectrograms to annotators? I've heard concerns voiced in the past that this additional stimulus can bias annotators toward certain types of behaviors, so maybe we should be careful about that? We can maybe pick that up in a side issue.

My $0.02:

Our main reason for including spectrograms in Gracenote's annotation tool was to have an additional mode that can help facilitate and expedite the annotation process. However, since we are dealing with a different task, showing a spectrogram might be less helpful and may introduce bias as you said. I think it'd still be good to be open to adding additional visualizations to help make the annotation process faster/better if possible.

@bmcfee do you have any references that discuss the issue?

[julian-urbano]

My two cents:

• For the task we are dealing with, I don't see the use of a spectrogram or any other visualization. I think the most important aspect is that users know the sounds they have to look for, so I'd focus on how we present the taxonomy and how we train users.
• For presenting the taxonomy, I'd try both: the hierarchy and some search mechanism (maybe highlight the tree nodes that match the search terms). Should also be able to play an example of each instrument.

[ejhumphrey]

two updates:

• we're using CrowdCurio's audio annotator now, which allows us to control visualization dynamically
• that team is currently exploring the effects of visualization on annotation, and we can probably take the lead from their efforts.

will leave open for now, but this is a smaller issue than it once was