Sound Design in UX Discipline
Have you ever imagine watching a movie without any sound effects? What would you feel like watching a movie without any sound design like audio effects? It would be too boring, we guess. Sound design is a complex topic with different facts and jobs involved in it.
To be honest, it isn't an easy job to do, and it requires some skills. Before going deep into sound design, let's be clear what exactly is a sound design on a fundamental level. Movie Makers create different audio effects on a visual basic in order to lift the mood, atmosphere, and tone.
In this article, you'll be able to get to know how things work as a sound designer and different examples of sound design in our daily lives. Also, with that, we'll see what the connection between sound design and user experience is? But first, let's define sound design in general.
What is Sound Design?
Sound design is a technique or exercise of creating different soundtracks according to different needs. It requires various audio production tools and techniques for creating aural elements. A sound designer's primary task involves editing, recording audios, creating sound effects, and most importantly the generating dialogues.
Apart from that, the purpose of a sound designer is to create sounds from scratch. In simple words, a sound designer is one who exercises/practices sound design. Remember, a sound designer does not record or play music on live sets. The production mixer is responsible for record music on live stages.
There are some fundamentals of sound design that a designer must follow:
No doubt, sound design is a fundamental part of the film industry—especially when making or creating illusions as imagery. With modern technologies and the use of CGI, everything you see in movies is just an illusion. Everyone knows nothing is real in the films. The same goes for the design; what you hear in the movie is never real.
Sound design is always a way to enhance the visuals and storytelling of the film. Without sounds, you would see a flat moving picture. Do you think the sound of wind whispers, birds Chirping, drop of rain, thunderstorms, and other sound effects are real in movies? Almost every sound that uses in the film is well manipulated. All this happens due to the hardworking of sound designers and modern technologies.
Well, that was a brief introduction to sound design. We tried our best to cover this topic simply and straightforwardly. The following section will clear your facts furthermore. We'll see the different examples of sound design in various departments of life mostly.
An Example of Everyday Sound Design
Well, the use of sound is mainly used in film industries and some other social influencers. Social influencers are usually YouTubers and other content creators.
Let's first talk about the sound designers of sci-fiction and horror movies. The sound of sound designers in the film will probably help achieve the original sounds from different sources—the sound of unrealistic objects like the sound of an alien's spacer or a horror creature sound design.
The lightsaber sound is an excellent example of unrealistic sound design. One of the primary weapons in the movie "Star Wars." The lightsaber's sound is usually generated by the mixer of film projector motor, with some TV interference, and waving a mic in front of loudspeakers to generate swooshing sound. That's how a designer creates sound effects for unrealistic objects.
Different sound designers may use the same skills and tools to generate quality sound for various purposes, but their thinking might differ.
Let's take another example of sound design from the movie "Jurassic World." In this movie, sound and visual designers did backbreaking work to make it to the box-office. They worked on the sound of some ancient animals or creatures. Let's take Velociraptor sound as an example. The main issue was designers hadn't ever listened to the sound of dinosaurs. That's where human intuition came to rescue; they mix the dolphin's shriek with a walrus to make a roar of a raptor.
Common Uses for Sound Design
You can never achieve anything in this world without genuine dedication and self-belief. Any simple task requires hard work. The same goes for sound designing. Today's the world of digital, everyone so keen to use digital devices. And in this modern world of technologies, there are many areas where sound design is the priority.
Here's the first use of the sound design in podcasts. We've already mentioned, sound design is an art. You can design or create anything or take sound anywhere you want if you have a creative mind. The sound design combines sound manipulation, effects, editing, delays, and other impactive effects.
Podcasters mostly use all these features. Podcast is a perfect use of sound design. Here are some popular podcasts channels/shows that make effective use of sound design.
What if we tell you that you can use sound in the computer-based interfaces? Mostly the user interface designers prefer to create visual means. You can also use sound design in your graphical interface. You are still wondering how interface or graphics designers make use of sound in the interface? Well, it's a whole different topic and concept. But keep that in mind, you can use make of sound in visual interfaces and robots.
Well, these were some uses of sound design and some of its examples. In the next and the last section, you'll be able to understand the relationship between sound design and user experience.
The Relationship Between Sound Design and UX
So far, you've seen different aspects of sound design. Now, it's time to describe the science behind sound design and user experience (UX), just as we give a hint in the previous section, the inclusion of sound into the user interface. The same goes for the user experience, and you can also include sounds to make your interface more user-friendly.
But there's one drawback of including sound design into your interface design. Most graphic or interface designers aren't much confident to use sound in the design because it may slow down the page load. There's no doubt that sound design inclusion into the user interface can be exciting for the users. The excitement of the users means a better user experience.
But we cannot be depended on few facts. Let's take a simple website design as an example. The first requirement for a good user experience is to use many exciting elements to gain the user's attention. Any type of sound design inside the website design would be interesting for the user. It's an exciting way to gain the attention of the user.
Conclusion
Well, that all from our side. We tried our best to explain everything about the sound design. With the help of this article, you can make a difference between sound design and user experience. And lastly, you are able to know how sound designing works in sci-fi movies.
