Transcripts
1. Introduction : Hi there. My name is Henry Door. I'm a sound on Audi branding consultant and director for an [inaudible] sound. I'm happy to be able to share a course on the topic of sound design in UX. Now it might not be a topic that has gotten much attention in field of design, but I'm here to say it's really important and I hope that after this course you will also agree with me. As our technology gets smarter, less attention demanding and more holistically designed, sound will play an increasing important role in our everyday lives. I guess this course aims to pay for this. It will highlight the importance of sounds making web of good and bad sound experiences, where through a device, half way on a website. It will also demonstrate how to include sounds and into your overall design process. If you incorporate sounds on the right way and give it the attention and focus it deserves. Probably set a guided principles that I'll be going through with you. It will help to ensure expertly crafted sounds ion, and helps create beautiful user experiences. This course will also provide insights and how to effectively develop an audio brand in a world is becoming ever more dependent on sound. As we slowly move away from screens and tools are primary in the feature that would you interface. So yeah, I look forward seeing on the course.
2. What is Sound Design in UX? : What is Sound Design in UX? Well, essentially front to any sound that's part of user experience, which isn't necessarily anything new. Just think of the sounds heard whistle boiling a kettle, opening a fridge door, going to shortly music blaring out or sitting in a restaurant, the noisy acoustics. All these examples given are commonly ill-conceived, often not thought out at all, even accidental. However, when we start talking about sound design in UX, or the more defined terms of UX sound or UX/UI sound design, we're applying a specialist field to the craft of product sound design. This elevates the field and gives it significance within a design process. UX sound can be described as highly considered sound design for our interfaces, designed to improve usability and enhanced user experience. This falls in line with the demands of our tech products and the emergence of UX Design, which is pretty much integrated into everything that we create nowadays. UX design is a very holistic approach to design, putting the user experience at the forefront. It makes sense that sound design should be incorporated into that process also. Let's quickly look at some common examples we use interface sound. Now this is of course I have a lot of experienced stemming from my 13 years at Nokia and later on at Microsoft, followed by my three years since setting and with oblique sound. Let's start here and the startup sounds you'll hear with the Xbox. Firstly, the feedback sound heard immediately after pressing the on button, a sound that affirms the fact that the device has started up. This sound is a good example of applying a metaphorical meaning, which is a common approach with user interface sound to amplify the meaning. You have the three notes, YZ and sequenced indicates something starting up or turning on. Then, when the Xbox is finished starting up, it plays another sound. This sound confirms that the device is fully loaded up. This is of course the Xbox signature sound which syncs up to the logo animation. It's evolved over the years as a key brand asset. If you compare it to the previous sound which was a lot more functional, this sound as a distinct character to it designed to reflect the Xbox brand and provide an emotional connection. Next, a simple incoming notification sound such as commonly heard ping in the iPhone, somewhat gently informing there're messages being received. This is the sound without any clear metaphorical meaning. It's more of a symbolic approach to use interface sound, which is designed to create an association over time. Next, an example of a more alerting notification, such as a high poverty alarm in a hospital designed to urgently demand your attention. The sounds here can be thought of as abstract or traditional alarm sound has become synonymous with clinical environments. However this is one area that I'm heavily involved with, and we're working to change the common perception of what a hospital alarm should sound like, introducing a richer sound palette and making them more informative. Here's an example of a gentle notification sound to confirm an interaction, the sound your smartphone makes when you take a photo. This is a good example of a realistic or literal approach to use interface sound. It's a sound designed to sound like the real live sound of the event. It's less common to have used interface sounds purely from this approach as it can sound dated much as a skeuomorphic approach is dated for visual icons. Although there's no doubting that it creates easy to understand meanings. We can also have subtle interaction sounds or transition sounds, communist part of a touchscreen interface. Sounds to add a subtle UX layer among off to light to UI interaction. A common example is a keypad touch sound. You'll often have small differences in pitch between standard typings, space bar and backspace. Subtle design touches that can really make a positive difference to user experience. An example for a simple transition sound that you've all probably heard, but might not have necessarily notice before, which is a good thing by the way, the small sound you hear after refreshing or Twitter feed on mobile. If you want to hear more examples of these kind of small transition sounds, opened the Facebook mobile app. They have various clicks and pops within their app. I'll say this is one area where sound is really underused.
3. Why is UX Sound Important?: Why is UX sound important? User interface sound can provide simple, functional, and easy to understand feedback if done well. That's always been the case. I do think that's widely understood. But it's important to understand that this new and emerging field of sound design comes at a very relevant time. Our digital products are getting smarter and more advanced. As a consequence, they are also becoming less reliant on screens or visual stimuli. In time, technology should become totally ubiquitous in our lives with reduced interruptions or cognitive burden. Sound design will obviously play a huge role if designed well and applied appropriately. Sometime we've talked a lot about at Nokia, at least during the latter years, was heads up technology. This was the vision to move people away from constantly staring down into small computer screen. Quite a vision for mobile company it's true, but this is where the technology needed to go. People were becoming more aware of their screen time. Actually iPhone have just added application that now notifies you if you're spending too much time on your phone. All of this of course, gravitates to trend towards user voice UI or virtual assistants. But user interface sound is so much more than voice. They're often the small sounds you hardly even notice gently nudging you about something or seamlessly contributing to beautiful user experience. Another reason we see sound design in products gain more attention and recognition is a vital part of the user experience, is simply the evolution of design as a field. World class design is so much more than how something looks, it's about how we interact with the product. It's about the usability, it's about how a product makes us feel. It's a truly multi-sensory user experience. Some can have a massive impact on all of these aspects and although there's a long way to go, this is becoming a more widely held belief within a design and technology industry. As these trends emerge, as reality of the sound and music can contribute a huge amount in the development of brand personality and awareness. In the context of UX sound and audio branding, it is a delicate area which needs careful consideration and I will be discussing this more later on in the course. However, if your user experience is becoming primarily based on sound, it's something that you cannot ignore. It's something you need to get right. Your UX sound should match up to your brand story. If you don't pay enough attention to a sound, this can be very detrimental to not just use experience, but one's perception of the brand.
4. Incorporating UX Sound Into the Design Process: This is a big question. I do strongly believe in time, sound design will become a standard part of the design process just as visual designers. What can we do to bring UX sound into the product design process? The key point here is to include sound at an early stage and thus avoiding the all too common scenario whereby sound is simply hacked on at the end of a product's development. You'll need to include sounds on into the design process. I strongly believe that in time this will become standard practice just as visual designers. In order for this to happen, we'll need to start seeing sound incorporated into high level thinking. There are countless graphical representations of a design process and the UX design process, but sound design seldom gets mentioned. Just as an example, what have we took the popular Five Elements of UX by Jesse James Garrett, which we see here. I'm sure most of you will be familiar with this. What if we added sound design to the surface there at the top as a concrete entity. Importantly, this would get people thinking about sounds on as part of the complete design process. Right from the bottom all the way up to the top. Enabling conceptualization with sound throughout the other elements of the process. Is important to highlight the fact that visual design isn't the only way to navigate uninformed uses. Something else you can do to help incorporate sound is to start playing around the sound ideas based on early prototypes or simply just wire frames. Looking at how sound design can improve an interaction or at a moment of delight to your user experience. For the wire frames, especially it doesn't necessarily need to evolve any sound content at all. It's more about merely highlighting opportunities and areas for exploration. Ultimately incorporating UX sound into your process will count for little. Unless you have high-quality sound design content. This is where you need to work with a specialist UX UI sound designer.It's a very unique field of sound design, which is only now starting to get recognition, but an experienced UX UI sound design will be able to work with your UX team, quickly create sound design concepts and understand the importance of expertly crafted sound design down to the finest detail. Now, it's important to state that there are plenty of sample libraries available, which will include user interface sounds. But these are almost always designed for use in TV, films or games. Certainly not as part of a high-quality design product. If you need some sounds quickly as part of some early prototype testing, then the library sounds could be an option. But at some point you will need to work with a sound designer. If you're working with an outside contractor, then to save on costs, use the fact that you can bring them in and out of the project at times most suitable. Now acknowledge, I personally have very unique experience in this field, set up on my long career at Nokia, but I made it one of my life goals to elevate this field through talks and articles, and of course, through my work. I've no doubt that we will see more and more sound designers specializing in UX UI sound design, stemming from education both in music schools and design schools.
5. Sound Design in UX Principles: Sound design will always be subjective, but if you follow these sets of guided principles, you'll lay the foundations for great UX sound. Abiding by these principles is not just for the person designing the sound. It should be up to multiple facets of the product design structure to enable and implement these principles from the product manager to the product designer, to the various shoots of the UX designer role. So we have Don't Over-design, Design for Speaker context, Design Holistically, Design Silence, and Same Design Principles for All. I'll now go through each principle and discuss in more detail. First, we have Don't Over-Design. This is one of the most important considerations when designing and implementing sound as part of an interface. I'd say this is often the most challenging factor with someone who is not used to designing UI sounds. It's easy to over-design something if you're used to designing far bigger and more extravagant sounds for different mediums. In essence, it should be about going as minimal as you can, which is a lot more challenging than it sounds. Then finessing those small nuances in the sound, for example, blending textures or using a very subtle echo effect. Here's a simple example to highlight what I mean. A mobile notification sound that I recently created. Firstly, without any of those nuances I referred to. Secondly, that notification sound but this time with those small nuances I talked about. Hopefully, you can hear the differences in those sounds and appreciate the fine craft of creating these small sounds. The first sound features only one instrument or layer, whereas the second sound has multiple layers or textures, as well as subtle effects including echo and reverb. This is really where the expertise of the sound designer is key. Designing user Interface sounds should be about firmly keeping in mind user perspective at all times and of course, the function you are designing for. The moment you drift too far from that focus, it can easily lead to bad UX sound. It's really important to remember that UX sound, if done well, should lessen the cognitive load and certainly not increase it. Make sure the tension load is only as much as is needed for it to work effectively. Next, we have Design for Speaker Context. This is absolutely crucial, especially considering that as our tech gets more advanced, often the speakers are compromised and made even smaller. So it has been the case with no bars, but think also advanced wearable smart doorbells, medical devices, etc. Working with small speakers means you'll need to work with very limited bandwidths. Often mean there's little to no bass frequency response. As an offshoot, there will also be certain higher/sharper frequencies that get overly pronounced, as well as a general incapability to play certain sounds without a degree of distortion. It is the job of the sound design to work within these restrictions; something that I'd been doing for over 15 years since my early days at Nokia. Now, through experience, you do gain in natural instinct as to what sounds will work and what won't. But not all small speakers are the same. This is key, and that's why testing on device is crucial. The sounds will need to be continually iterated until you hit that sweet spot. Balancing suitable audibility against a pleasing sound. In product development, the speaker hardware is often one of the last things to be finalized, which can be challenging for a sound designer. You might need to work with a mock-up version of the speaker in the meantime, or simply work with other devices that have small speakers, laptop speakers, display speakers, or of course, smartphone speakers. If you're working with an app then the sounds will need to work well across multiple smartphones. So it's wise to test-using several phones if he can. Next, Design Holistically. In the common case of designing a set of UI sounds match you up to different functionalities, you need to think very holistically, not just as individual sounds. You'll need to reflect the audio identity of the device, Apple website, as a coherent, close-knit family of sounds, which worthwhile as a group of sounds and accurately represent your brand identity. I will be covering more about the brand consideration a bit later on in the course. But you need to also think how the sounds relate to each other. They need to sound like they're part of the same family, but be varied enough in their meanings to make sense to the user. As an example, here is a set of four notifications I created for mobile. They are closely matched in tonality, clearly belong to the same brand family. However, they clearly indicate different types of notifications. So they're all different, but clearly part of the same family based on similar tonality, production techniques and instrumentation. Some sounds should embody very close relationship to each other. For example, it's common practice to have coherent UI sound pairings. A common example is the listening confirmation sounds used by Sirri. Here's a few other examples view from sounds I created in the past. Coherent pairings quite easy to understand meanings for the user, as well as enhanced the holistic design experience. Next, Design Silence. As a sound design you think are dissuade from this; not at all. Good sound design can also be about removing bad unnecessary sound. It's about creating the essential notification sounds that are true value to the user experience and enhance the usability or adding subtle transition sound and interaction sounds such as Caitlin. For areas in between, there will be opportunities to explore to see whether UI sound can really work and improve the UX. Play around with UI animation flow and overlay with sound. See how adding sound in certain places affects the use experience. If it's creating unnecessary tension, then it's generally not a good thing. But it can often be down to the volumes you applying rather than the sound design itself. This is where it should be a collaborative effort between the sound designers, UX designers and engineers responsible for the audio capabilities of the device. These areas should be explored, but they clearly don't work either through the sounds design or UX design instincts, or through user-testing and simply remove them. It's important to remember here that we shouldn't be adding sound into our user experiences for the sake of it; there's already plenty of sound out there clamoring for attention. Make sure all the sounds you use have a clear and functional purpose. Whether it be notifying the user of something or adding a subtle UX layer. I should also point out that it should be easy for users to turn off UI sounds if they so wish. In some cases, such as desktop websites, the UI sound should maybe be off by default. Final principle I'd like to talk about is Same Design Principles for All. This really is about reinforcing the fact that UX sounds are a key component of your product or app identity. Think of the sounds as the voice of your product or service and a vital component of your design DNA. To ensure your voice is suitable and coherent with the rest of your product or brand expression, you should be following the same design principles for every facet of your design, including sound design. This will require the design team to play a key role. So it's about working as a team. Whoever has inspired the designers to design a product a certain way, this will also be applicable to the sound designer. This income for mood-boards as well as design and brand keywords. This will really help the sound designer creatively. I can tell you that all sound designers will really appreciate having something to help inspire their work. Reflecting high-level design principles into sound is not however, necessarily a literal process. It can be about how you translate those principles to a sound design perspective. Here are some examples taken from a project I undertook back at Nokia when designing sounds for the new me-go and nine platform. At the top there, the design driver, delightful to use for audio purposes. This could be translated as pleasing on the ear. Well then simple, intuitive could mean no clutter and so on. Final point here is really about reinforcing the power of product sound design. There are many considerations for the aesthetic qualities of products sound design, and it will be down to the sound design and design team to forge an appropriate soundscape. The key design materials or the device or hardware contexts in which the sounds will be heard could be a big factor in the sound direction. The power of sound design can really be utilized to reflect the qualities of the device or affect them. Enhancing one's perception of the product experience. In cars where sound design is actually often very well thought out. The sound of the car door is often manufactured far beyond the mechanical sound of a metal door closing. They aim to emphasize a solid feeling affecting one's perception of good-quality or something safe. I'll play you a quick example of how effective it is to reflect or affects the aesthetic qualities of a device. These are to use interface sounds I created in the past; indicates something else connected. The first one. A very metal-like sound with a mechanical feel which could reflect the materials of the device. It also gives off a secure feel, which might also be an important consideration. Secondly, another connected sound. But this one has a daily organic and light feel to it and also a playful nature. Hearing these hopefully demonstrates to you how effective it can be to accentuate the materials of the device or the characteristics which match up to your product.
6. User Testing and Research with UX Sounds: Next I want to talk a little bit about user testing and research as this is really important, just as testing and research is important for other aspects of designing usability. For UX sounds, testing and research can help to guide the direction, eliminate any mistakes you're about to make, and ultimately validate your sounds. In my long experience, validating of sounds is almost essential if at some point you need to seek higher approval. Firstly, I'd say it's important to research the competitive landscape. If you are designing a particular sound, for example, a startup sound, look at an array of similar device startup sounds already out there, which ones work well in your eyes, which ones don't. Understand though that as UX sounds is still extremely under-used, you may not be able to find so many existing cases. Look from a broader perspective also, an existing user experiences, much as you were to analyze the visual and interactive elements. Are there any UX sounds? Could introducing sound make your product or app stand out? Once your already interface designs are in full flow and assuming that sound design is being consumed into the design process, in a lot of cases, it's a good idea to test any key UX sound design concepts at an early stage, don't wait until everything is built on the sounds or in. Testing early can ensure you don't waste time designing something that clearly doesn't work whereas to also helping to focus to the direction and interface development. It can be very simply constructed user testing involving a small number of people and simply listening through sounds to gather feedback. Next, testing sounds within user experience. To truly get an accurate idea of how the sounds work, you need to hear the sounds as part of the interaction, portraying the real-life case as much as possible within a testing environment. This will ensure that users are focused on the interaction rather than simply analyzing a certain sound. This can be enabled by using prototypes or animation flows, giving accurate representation of how the user experience will be. As a UX/UI sound designer, working with these animations as a movie file is absolutely crucial. It allows you to accurately design the sounds in terms of length, but also allows you to see what is visually happening at the same time on the screen. In some cases, the animation won't be available or won't be created yet. But in this case, the sound you create can help to shape the interaction, another key benefit of bringing sound design into the process at an early stage. Next, testing for different contexts. This is really about ensuring you test outside of a standard testing environment. There are multiple factors that can affect how a sound is perceived or to what extent it is effective, varying background noise levels, different locations, different times of day, as just a few examples. Different contexts can also include any accessibility issues people might have such as hearing or sight impairments or simply just an aversion to technology. If it's clear in what context of sounds will be used, especially in terms of the environment, then make sure you test accordingly. For example, sounds designed for clinical use should be tested property within a hospital. A poorly designed and thought out sound in a hospital can have pretty drastic consequences. To facilitate contextual testing, the easiest way maybe to allow users to use the sounds in the real world, to be used on a daily basis, maybe for one or two weeks. This method could be so much more effective and insightful than simply onetime testing within the test environment. Finally, it's vitally important tests the sounds with the final hardware based on the finalized speaker context. Whether it's a mobile device of some sort or in the case of an app, it could be the latest range of Android, and iOS smartphones. In my experience, you may have to wait until the latter product development cycle for the audio playback capabilities to be finalized based on various parameters that are available to the audio engineer or speaker designer. All the sounds that you have in the system will then need to undergo a period of fine tuning. The sounds will need to be continually iterated by the sound designer to ensure they sound as good as possible, which in the case of small speakers, often comes down to how much you can hide the limited capabilities of the speaker and work within the restrictions. The volume levels will also need to be determined in showing consistent and appropriate audio experience.
7. Brand Development with UX Sounds: Next, Brand Development with UX sounds. Now audio branding is a huge area which is constantly evolving. In times past, audio branding simply meant you had catchy jingle acted as a brand reminder. Thinking on this has changed a lot and today audio branding means so much more. Audio branding is about having the holistic and strategic approach, considering every audio touch-point with expertly crafted sound and music. For example, through products sound, both hardware and software, add music, store ambiance, and tonal voice. Effective audio branding when it ensures and consistent and congruent audio experience across your brand. Now, as an Neave considered UI sound design increases, I've no doubt that brands will look at ways to integrate key UI sounds into the marketing strategies. We are already seeing this today with loads of Ads, wanted to highlight their smart technology and how it interacts with people. You'll often hear key notification or confirmation sounds. Now there will undoubtedly be opportunities to create unique brand of minus product sounds, sounds to express a certain character that fits to your brand. For example, to a startup sound or important notification. However, you need to be very careful if using UX sounds as part of a marketing strategy. Sounds can easily become annoying if overused, especially if driven by marketing means. What I would say on user interface sound is that if you focus more on the design and the function, you stand a much better chance of establishing a successful audio brand. Nothing should feel forced in any way. I like to share a quick example with you to highlight some of this thinking, the sound design, an audio identity I created for Wayfindr. Wayfindr created the first open standard for audio-based navigation. The aim of Wayfindr is to empower visually impaired people to navigate the world independently based on a consistent and coherent navigational experience. The requirements for me were fairly simple, create two sounds, a "General Notification Alert" that you'd hear prior to every voice instruction and a "Journey Completed Alert." Also establishing an auto identity for Wayfindr going forward. Notice how they are, they very much appear in a pair of sounds. This relationship between the two sounds became a key part of the branding inspiration and designed DNA feeding into the oval identity work. The combination of these two sounds also worked really nicely as a separate sound, a sound that can be used as an audio logo to be used in certain situations. For example, with the new logo animation. In addition, this sound has a potential for use or some accreditation sound. A sound that can be played as soon as you enter into his own that's supported by Wayfindr. So rather than just adding a new audio logo into the saturated world of audio logos, the sounds are a key part of the user experience. My final point here is to emphasize the fact you need to think very holistically when creating product sounds, whilst considering the brand development opportunities. This is something that is factored into all of the work that I do as a UX UI sound designer, going back to the days when I worked at Nokia, where I had to maintain and develop, which was in reality one of the world's most recognized audio brands. That always blew my mind a bit. I have something to show you which hopefully gives you idea of what I'm talking about with the brand hierarchy. By the way, this will be related to the second part of the course assignment, something to keep in mind. This permit here represents the audio identity of each Nokia device. The Nokia tune here at the top of the pyramid, the most brand recognizable sound of course, and really the heart and soul of the identity for each device, followed by the default alerts. All these sounds described would then form the core brand sound set. Sounds such as strongly reflect the brand and design principles, often using similar textures and tonality. These sounds together can form a very strong brand and design statement. Then just underneath these sounds we have all the other sounds you were likely to have on a Nokia devices, such as additional ringtones and system UI sounds. These sounds are more flexibility enabling you to further express the brand or focus solely on functionality. All sounds, however, should still reflect the same brand and design principles. This thinking drives a lot of the work we do oblique sounds. Not every brand has a Nokia tune at the top of the pyramid, of course, but the same principles can be applied to all products. For smart lock, you might, for example, have a startup sound there at the top, followed by an important notification, and then all the other more functional sounds below that. For part two of the course assignment, I'd like you to apply similar thinking, studying selection of UX sounds from an existing product experience using a conceptual example I give or coming up with your own Before ranking all sounds in terms of brand significance, highlighting key opportunities for brand expression and audio brand development.
8. Final Thoughts: Well that's pretty much it. Thanks for taking the time to go through the course. Just a few thoughts to finish with. Firstly, I think it's important to understand that sounds design is part of UX is still very much an emerging field. I'm expecting a lot more development in this field over the coming years. It's up to myself and others as UX sound designers to help promote the importance of sound as part of the process and do the great work that contributes to beautiful user experiences. But it will also be down to designers and design thinking leaders, especially to help define sounds on in UX. In a way there's even more structured and fully integrated into the design process. Sound as part of the UX, is gaining more attention. There's no doubt about that, it's clear the emergence of the voice interfaces definitely contributing to that as our technology and services latch onto the current ecosystems or develop their own. We already see it widely in the home, in the shops, in the car. It's really only a matter of time before the audio interface becomes the primary interface. So the same level of focus and attention needs to be given to sound as to all elements of design. Currently, the voice UI and UX is a separate entity developing at it's own fast pace, completely outside the control of the UX, UI sounds on it. But I do expect this to change. I'm personally very interested to see how the voice UX changes. We will see an evolution from the basic voice approaches we see today, which in effect to trying to mimic human to human conversation. If you think about it, this is a very skeuomorphic approach. A graphical user interface evolved in something more modern, sophisticated. So we eventually see a similar path with an audio interface. Is it possible to create unique and memorable sonnet language while voice assistance using combination of voice and creative sound design, or even just creative sound design on its own? We'll have to see. Anyway, my hope is that from this course, at the very least, you'll become more aware of sound as part of our everyday user experiences. I really encourage you to listen to the world around you and ask yourself, can it be improved? Seek opportunities of how sound can play a role in your work as designers. Then collectively with specialized UX UI sound designers, for the principles for successful user interface sound that I've discussed. User experience is incredibly important and immensely powerful, affecting our user experiences, the usability and one's feelings towards a brand. UX sound will only become more prevalent as our tech develops, I've no doubt about that. So hopefully this course will go some way in helping you prepare for that. Finally, I hope that you can have a go at the two-part course assignment I've set, there really isn't a right or wrong element to it. So just treat it as a fun exercise. For the first part, I'm encouraging you to listen more during your everyday experiences and then articulate your thoughts on sound. The second part is about focusing in on product experience, considering a typical set of products who act sounds, work with a conceptual example given or find your own, whether it be something you've come across or something you're working on. I'll welcome you to get in touch if you want to talk about anything and I hope you've enjoyed the course. Bye for now.
