The (Audio) User Experience
Designing a high quality Audio User Experience requires a holistic view of the journey that a user may take, and the technology and techniques required to deliver the audio for that experience.
What is Audio User Experience?
The Audio User Experience describes how users feel, think, and behave when interacting with and experiencing audio content, a product, or systems. Designing the AUX requires special attention paid to the intersection of audio with other aspects of the user experience, such as visual elements and interactions.
For 2D interfaces like a screen, sounds play an important role in giving a user feedback about the app or operating system. For spatial and embodied interfaces, the way those sounds are presented to a user plays a critical role.
Designing the audio user experience has expanded beyond “designing sounds” to… “designing the sound”.
The future of User Experiences requires Audio Intelligence: machines that perceive, understand, generate, and physically reason about sound. It's the missing dimension of spatial intelligence and the foundation for the next generation of audio UX.
Audio UX for Spatial Computing
Audio user experience design goes beyond designing the sounds that play when a user interacts with an interface or how audio is spatialized in a virtual reality experience. It is the totality of design choices that leverage technology to guide and react to inputs from users, their world (virtual and physical), and any applications with which they are interacting. It’s how sound is delivered to users and why.
High Quality Content Demands High Quality AUX
High quality audio content goes a long way towards creating a quality audio user experience, but spatial computing and embodied experiences need more than the content alone can accomplish. And high quality audio content deserves more; it deserves to be part of an experience where it feels natural and feels like an extension of the user and the space which they are in. It deserves a high quality audio user experience design.
Benefits of a High Quality Audio UX
Optimize and supercharge the user experience design process with an audio UX that elevates brand recognition and gives a competitive advantage by setting products apart in a sea of user experiences without thoughtful audio UX design, all while supporting product design goals.
