Designing for sound as a component of product experience: Development of a novel conceptual tool

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Mimarlık Fakültesi, Endüstriyel Tasarım Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2015

Öğrenci: KORAY BENLİ

Danışman: OWAIN FRANCIS PEDGLEY

Özet:

As a medium of interaction between users and products, the sound emitted by a product plays an important role in people's product experiences. However, in order to enhance user-product interaction, the design of auditory features of products is generally overlooked in the course of design process. This is in comparison with thesignificant effort spent by designers for the visual features of products. In this context, the purpose of this thesis is to explore the current and future practice of product sound design and to conceptualize a set of suggestions from a 'design for interaction' perspective that respond to auditory interaction opportunities within product design. The foundational literature review focuses on crossovers between user experience and auditory interaction, whilst also uncovering present thinking and research in relation to the anatomy and classification of sounds, and proposed methods for product sound design. A 'research through design' approach is adopted for the thesis fieldwork, combining the iterative design of a conceptual tool (SoundsGood V1, V2, V3) with feedback and design suggestions generated through interviews and focus group sessions conducted with industrial designers. SoundsGood V3 is proposed as a suitably specified solution to stimulate designers to develop auditory user-product interaction ideas within their wider product design processes. The thesis concludes with suggestions for the consideration, generation and communication of auditory interaction ideas by industrial designers, in addition to a presentation of the features of SoundsGood V3.