Surrounded by Sound: The Beeps of our Lives

UX sound design can make – or break – a product experience.

I have an air fryer, from a brand that will remain unnamed. It is a solid product, overall - it works as intended, and is great for whipping up crispy tofu, or a quick batch of tater tots. Nevertheless, I find myself avoiding using it whenever I can, and I would hesitate to recommend it to a friend.

The reason for my reluctance is simply the awful sounds it makes.

Virtually every interaction I have with this air fryer – scrolling through baking modes, setting the temperature, etc – is accompanied by a piercing, hair-raising beep. This beep occupies a frequency range and loudness level usually reserved for emergency alerts, with no option to turn it off or even lower the volume. When it is done cooking, it gives this same beep ten times, over a duration of fifteen seconds, during which I find myself hoping against hope that each beep will be the last. The sound design is bad enough to render an otherwise perfectly good product deeply unpleasant to interact with.

Why does it sound like this?

It didn’t have to be this way. Sound is a powerful tool for product designers when used responsibly. It provides functionality, feel and, when calibrated just right, even joy. But getting there requires thoughtfulness, intention, and a deep understanding of how users and customers interact with your product.

I remember it, even though I was five years old when Windows 95 launched. It’s a brief sound, but in a cultural landscape where technology is suffused into the fabric of our daily lives, these small audio cues make a big impact. But this particular sound is notable for its unique origin – it was composed by Brian Eno, the sonic mastermind behind David Bowie’s Heroes and Talking Heads’ Remain In Light and the godfather of ambient music. In a 1996 interview with SFGATE, Eno describes the process for creating the sound, which might sound familiar to anyone working in sonic branding:

“The thing from the agency said, ‘We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah- blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional,’ this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said ‘and it must be 3 1/4 seconds long.“ said Eno. “I thought this was so funny and an amazing thought to actually try to make a little piece of music. It’s like making a tiny little jewel.”

Startup sounds have proven to be effective sonic cues for devices with longer boot-up times, such as computers and gaming consoles. As we discussed with Netlifx in a previous installment of this series, by placing these sounds in front of compelling experiences, users build a natural affinity for them and begin to associate them with everything that makes your product great. These cues summon instantaneous, if subtle emotional responses - for example, consider how you feel when you hear this sound. This makes these sonic cues incredibly valuable, with the potential to serve double duty in marketing and content, as brands like Netflix and Xbox demonstrate.

However, as always with UX sound, context is everything. While branded startup sound is effective for some products, it is not universally applicable. Take mobile applications; Apple’s developer guidelines explicitly discourage developers from using the app launch screen as a branded moment, stating that the launch screen “isn’t an opportunity for artistic expression” and that its sole role is to “enhance the perception of your experience as quick to launch and immediately ready to use.” This is good advice - branded sounds should never add unnecessary friction to an experience. Like the Hippocratic Oath, the first rule of UX sound design is “Do no harm.” If branded sounds contribute to sonic clutter, make your product seem less responsive, or waste user’s time, they will only build negative associations (see my above complaints about my air fryer.)

So how do you find the right moment for branded UX sounds? By putting yourself in the shoes of users to understand their needs. To create branded sounds for Instacart, we investigated the user experience to find the perfect moments. We landed on Celebratory sounds reserved for interactions that were infrequent and unambiguously positive. These moments gave us license to use sound more expressively without being obtrusive or detrimental to the core functions of the app. We also developed a tiered system for certain UX sounds that allowed them to scale across three energy levels – Mild, Medium and Spicy – to ensure that Instacart would always have the right energy level for each moment.

When creating sounds for the PayPal sonic ecosystem, we took a completely different approach. For this brand, we wanted to reinforce the two central behaviors of the PayPal experience – paying and getting paid. Yuta Endo, Creative Director at Antfood and creative lead for the PayPal sonic brand, describes the process for scoring these moments:

“While a transaction may initially appear deceivingly lengthy, encompassing various stages such as initiation, information exchange, payment authorization, and post-transaction support, the ‘paying’ and ‘getting paid’ is the most crucial”, says Yuta. “Sound evokes profound emotional responses, as it intertwines with our memories, moods, and experiences. Sound can succinctly add both clarity and delight, and the accumulation of these small joyful moments strengthens the connection between the buyers and sellers, as well as the users and the brand.”

This element of human connection was key to our creative direction. Our goal was to create sounds that would be useful and intuitive for moments of transaction, without losing a human or emotional component.

“The phrase ‘transaction without transactional’ was pivotal in our approach”, explains Yuta. “We aimed to ensure that the sounds not only functionally conveyed a sense of a “transaction,” but also evoked emotions beyond the stereotypical coldness associated with transactions. Thus, instead of relying on coin jingling or cash register sounds that are common in the financial technology space, we leaned into upward movement, shimmery timbres, and intriguing tactility to achieve the essence of a ‘transaction’ in a way that feels warm and authentic.”

We also developed feedback sounds to confirm interactions and, where necessary, alert users to mistakes or errors. These sounds would need to be subtle and intuitive, providing feedback without getting in the way.

Ultimately, we left Instacart with a flexible toolkit of future-proof UX sound variations that could live on as the product grows and evolves.

How might hospitals create a better audio environment? This isn’t a simple question, as it involves myriad manufacturers and a complex intersection of incentives that skews the entire field towards over-alerting. But even if we could wave a wand and bring the perfect hospital sound ecosystem to life – what might that look like? How would we balance the multitudes of necessary sonic cues into a coherent and intuitive set of cues that are intuitive and informative while respecting peace of mind? Is there anywhere we can turn for inspiration on what such a system might look like?

This brings us, surprisingly, to Nintendo. It might seem ridiculous to compare the sound world of Nintendo to the sound ecology of a hospital. Nintendo’s products don’t save lives (at least not literally), and the kind of expressive, whimsical sounds that Nintendo uses would be comically out of place in a hospital environment, or most professional environments at that. But, if you take a closer look, their sounds are actually highly choreographed to feel pleasing, intuitive and harmonious. Their sound design is meticulous, highly intentional, and unexpectedly functional, making their games easier and more enjoyable to interact with.

Let’s use a concrete example to (hopefully) make this notion seem a little less ridiculous. In a New York Times article from 2019, Electronic musician Yoko Sen describes the stressful alarm environment during a stay in the hospital. She noticed two concurrent alarms clashing harmonically, with the two tones combining to create a tritone, one of the most harsh and dissonant musical intervals. This phenomenon is actually quite common and is one of the many drivers of alarm fatigue. How would Nintendo solve this problem? By meticulously curating every single bit of audio in the game world to be harmonious with one another. For example, their 2017 title Super Mario Odyssey features a myriad of expressive and melodious sounds. Impressively, every single one of these sounds is carefully tuned to the background music, as well as other sound effects in the game, avoiding clashing and dissonance. Furthermore, because players have the option to customize the music they are listening to, this means that every sound effect in the game has an alternate version designed to harmonize with every score in the game.

This attention to detail and respect for the player’s experience is present throughout all of their major titles. Their 2017 title Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild uses rich sound design and dynamic music to both inform and immerse players. Sonic cues confirm that they have picked up an item, alert them to an in-game character with a mission or information to deliver, and let players know they have landed a critical hit. Feedback is even embedded into the musical scores of the game, which responds dynamically to user actions. Taken together, these sounds provide rich feedback that helps teach players how to play the game, guiding their behavior and directing them towards objectives. As Robot-Assisted Surgery and similar advances in medical technology create new UX challenges, there will be a greater need for these types of cues. Ultimately, whether you make games or life-saving medical devices, certain universal principles of sonic UX hold true: pick the right moments, provide the right feedback, respect attention and consider how the system operates as a whole and within the overall listening environment.