I don’t know if you have noticed as I have, but recently it feels more and more like my car knows more about music than I do. Now granted thats not a very high bar to vault, but it still hurts. Each time I unlock the car, pop the trunk, leave a door open, theres a different little jingle that plays. Its been interesting going from the old days where the only noise was the ker-thunk of my childhood self slamming the door to our minivan. Now theres a whole ORCHESTRA in my car. How do the manufacturers know that people won’t misinterpret those fun noises? Well its all in SDT. Signal Detection Theory is how they test those notifications so the driver doesn’t misinterpret them. A good composer can make a symphony take the listener down a melodic journey, and now SO CAN YOUR CAR. You can make the ‘good’ alerts more pleasing to hear. Leaving the door open? No worries, I’ll just play some smooth jazz to let you know. However if something gets dangerous, then the conductor can signal the canons. Its important to be able to distinguish between which noises coming from your vehicle are just there to let you know about something and which ones are warning you about imminent danger. Signal Detection theory gives us the grounds to be able to reliably test which sounds perform better for which tasks. I know I have been sitting in a zoom call only to hear that little ding and wonder if someone joined or left the meeting. That quick decision could be life or death on the road. I guess Zoom didn’t do their proper research! Anyway, I thought I’d talk with you a bit about a fun topic I found out about while looking into Signal Detection Theory. Let me know what you think could be a cool use of SDT!