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Discipline

Sound design

Designs the sounds of a product, an interface or a place, so that they inform, guide and create an atmosphere.

In Spanish
Diseño sonoro
Origin
Schafer (1977); Gaver (1986) for interfaces

What it deals with

Sound is heard even when you are not looking. A badly designed alert annoys or goes unnoticed; a well-designed one is understood without thinking.

Principles

  • Inform

    A sound tells you what happened without you having to look.

  • Resemble something

    Sounds that recall the real world are understood faster.

  • The environment sounds

    Every place has a soundscape that is also designed.

Applications in design

  • Use it like this

    Use sound to confirm important actions or warn of something urgent.

  • Avoid

    Making sound the only way to convey a piece of information.

  • Don’t fall for it

    Test the sounds in the real place: with background noise, many can no longer be heard.

Connections

Related to

Authors and works

  1. 1977

    R. Murray Schafer

    Proposed studying and designing the soundscape of places.

  2. 1986

    William W. Gaver

    Proposed auditory icons: everyday sounds that convey information in an interface.

Sources

Original sources

  • Schafer, R. M. (1977). The tuning of the world. Knopf.
  • Gaver, W. W. (1986). Auditory icons: Using sound in computer interfaces. Human-Computer Interaction, 2(2), 167–177. View source: Gaver, W. W. (1986)

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