Sound Design: New sounds

I redesigned the sounds for the interface. So far swiping, entering and leaving the interaction box and the volume click sound have changed. Two new sounds joined the family; docking on and off from the volume adjustment gesture.
All sounds have now common sounds-fragments included, to make it clear, that all those sounds belong to the sound interface.

Sound Design: First Sounds

After playing around with the recordings and a lot of try outs in garageband (music instruments) and searching a sound database I came up with the sounds above.

  • Cancel: For the cancelling gesture (waving your hand saying no/stop)
  • Hover In: When entering the interaction field of the Leap
  • Hover Out: When leaving the interaction field of the Leap
  • Swipe Left: Selecting the next track
  • Swipe Right: Selecting the previous track
  • Thumb Up/Ok: Saying «Yes»/«OK» to the smart device during the dialogue
  • Volume Adjust: As long as adjusting the volume with a gesture grasping an invisible rotary knob

Sound Design for Interface

Acoustic feedback could enhance the gesture based interface experience. Without haptic and only little visual feedback a hearable hint could help the users to understand what effect their actions will produce. Acoustic feedback could indicate if the user is holding his hands in the right position and could also help to find the «correct» gesture.

A few attributes I am looking for in my interface sounds:
– pleasant
– a bit mechanical
– unobtrusive
– discreet
– confirmative
– not squeeky
– not too playful

An imaginable sound for a lamp to switch on could maybe sound like this: