Elevate Your Digital Product with Sound Design

Our team at 55 Minutes took another step in honing our skills in sound design, audio UX and sonic branding by completing an intensive sonic arts course. The course enabled our team to develop and implement sound elements in the design of digital applications and products.

Through six hands-on sessions with our instructor, Lecturer and Music Professional Andrew Chen, our team gained confidence in navigating the sound landscape. After the course, we sat down with Andrew to get his thoughts on how sound design can elevate the user experience and improve business outcomes.

Trends and Outlook

What are the most exciting advancements in sound technology that you see impacting the UX industry?

Audio is moving in leaps and bounds, especially with regards to quality, portability, and affordability. With regards to UX, Spatial and Immersive Audio are developing quickly, contributing dramatically to the AR/VR space. Additionally, AI-generated soundscapes and background music allows UX designs to quickly input prompts to enhance the auditory experience.

User Experience and Sound

How can sound improve user engagement and satisfaction?

In my opinion, leveraging sound as a means to convey emotion is most crucial. Some examples I can think of include setting the context or tone of an experience, for instance, mindfulness ambient sounds to invoke a peaceful and serene emotion. Conveying success and increasing dopamine with celebratory sounds tailored to a user’s musical preferences.

What role does sound play in shaping consumer emotions and behaviour?

Sound plays a crucial role, because our individual social and cultural contexts and history all weigh in on what music and audio means to us. Because of this, it’s important for digital products and brands to carefully select their sonic logos, background music, soundscapes, and voiceover narration tones. Inappropriate sound is very jarring and can lead to confusion and distortion of a brand or product’s identity.

Can sound be used to enhance accessibility and inclusivity in digital products?

Sound can provide aural and sonic cues for the visually handicapped such as narration and sound environments. AI-voices can be used to generate multiple languages for different territories. Appropriate auditory cues or alerts for events or actions within a product are typically the first thing that comes to mind with regards to infusing digital products with high-quality sound.

Business opportunities

How can businesses use sound to create a unique brand identity and differentiate themselves from competitors?

Recallability and recognition is the key when it comes to sonic branding. Businesses should invest time, effort, and resources to develop their sonic brand to improve their auditory experience on par with their look and feel. Adding to that, brands must factor in aural association and evocation. Hallmark industry leading examples of sonic branding include Apple, Netflix, Coca Cola, and McDonalds, just to name a few.

How can businesses capitalise on the opportunities presented by sound design?

Invest in creating sonic logos, background music and soundscapes, and UI elements which suit each digital product. You can leverage sound libraries, digital audio workstations, basic audio editing skills, AI-assisted audio restoration, and AI-generated music to achieve this.

During my lessons with 55 Minutes, I was able to teach the team to use various free browser-based programs which provided a low barrier of entry into the world of sound design and audio. This included using AI-powered sound restoration such as the free Adobe Speech Enhancer which allowed us to create professional studio-standard voiceovers with basic consumer devices such as our daily phone mics. Suno, the AI-music generation program, which allows us to write prompts to create music for specific user purposes, for instance, podcast background music, or website landing page music. The various free sound libraries also offer the ability to download sound packs which can be further edited using a digital audio workstation for UI elements.

Andrew with the 55 Minutes team during one of the six hands-on sessions

Can you provide examples of businesses that have successfully leveraged sound design to increase revenue or customer loyalty?

It’s been said that Amazon’s Alexa program contributed to Amazon Smart Speaker’s massive sales growth in 2020 and positive customer feedback. Older examples include the release of “I’m Lovin’ It” pop-r&b track by Pharrell and Justin Timberlake back in 2003 which greatly increased McDonald’s sales revenue at a difficult time.

In which industries or sectors do you see the most significant potential for sound design to create a competitive advantage?

Arts and entertainment is the obvious answer here, but peripherally I would look at healthcare and education. Reducing anxiety and helping people with emotional regulation would be meaningful in a world that is constantly becoming more homogenised and digital. Emotionally cognisant sound design for brands and products would provide a powerful advantage in customer satisfaction and connection.

After the course and this conversation with Andrew, our team was inspired to know that there are many ways we can apply sound design especially in the areas we advocate for such as mental wellbeing, as well as our work on edtech products.

At 55 Minutes, we’re interested in collaborating and connecting with sound designers and sound engineers who are keen to co-create user experiences that showcase the impact of sound on human emotions and are in the healthcare and education sector.

If you’re interested in collaborating, or are keen to look into sound design for your digital product, email us at hello@55mins.com. Let’s discuss how we can help level up your user engagement through sound design.

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Check out 55 Minutes’ audio-focused projects: the podcast series Can You Hear Us? and the sound personality quiz Sonicality.