I was with a friend, casually having breakfast with him while he navigated through his iPhone —nothing out of the ordinary — when I noticed something strange: his phone was not on vibrate mode. Yes, him and I kept hearing the unmistakable clicks of iOS keyboard sounds.
To me, that sound had long become a relic because I assumed most people had muted them, just like me, and by that turning their phones into silent tools devoid of audible personality. But there we were, listening to every tap, swipe, and notification as if it were part of some intricate symphony.
But why leave these sounds on when it feels better to have them turned off? I was met with a quite reasonable response:
Someone put this here for me, so it makes sense for me listen to it.
A very simple reply, coming from a not-so-simple man that made me, later, think what role sound design truly plays in our user experience.
There is an endless conversation about interface design — colors, typography, animations — yet sound design seems perpetually overlooked, even though it plays a deep and integral role in how we interact with the digital product. A good sound design is made visible by shaping a mood and persuading an user along an enhanced journey. When done poorly, it annoys and particularly even infuriates me.
Consider the ding of a sent message, the tinkle of a completed bank transaction, or the friendly pop when a notification arrives. Those sounds are not accidental, each one has been meticulously crafted and placed there to evoke a particular feeling, wether it is completion, satisfaction, affirmation, etc. There's an art to this that is, again, often under-appreciated.
Just like a humming refrigerator, app sounds blend into the background of our digital lives in an omnipresent fashion.
Sounds aren't background noise per se, but rather a cue to knowing when something is working, broken, or done. The feeling of navigating a world with no auditory feedback would be absolutely incomplete.
Research shows that certain frequencies of sound trigger emotional responses — dopamine hits, feelings of safety or alarm, among others. This is also true for the digital environment. Sound design is not just about pleasure, but also efficiency. Sonic feedback can speed up our ability to process information: yes, the button has been pressed.
Now, why do we mute these carefully curated auditory landscapes? I've wondered if it is because we're so bombarded with stimuli of in modern life that we've trained ourselves to minimize them to the point they're barely remembered. And yet, in muting these sounds, we are also muting the intentionality of the design. We strip the experience of its fullness.