By Heleen Engelen, Senior Product Designer at Philips Design and jury member of Soundscapes.

Until now in consumer electronics the only way to deal with sound was to make a product as quiet as possible. Mainly because the sounds coming from internal components, could be annoying. Being surrounded by the cacophony of noise coming from washing machines, vacuum cleaners, telephones, mixers, and coffee machines, originally encouraged manufacturers to go for the silent approach. Anything better than this chaos. But by taking away the sound completely, the products lost a part of their character. They lost a part of their communication to the consumer, which can, when not solved in another way, cause problems. In other industries examples are now emerging, showing that good sound design can add something extra to the brand and to the product which is even better than silence.

Brand identity
In the car industry there are car lovers who recognize their car by the sound of the slamming door. This sound sometimes especially created by a multi disciplinary team of sound designers, engineers, product designers and psychologists is very characteristic for the brand it is created for. The sound enhances the values, for example sturdiness, safety, and trust that are the base of the specific brand. The car becomes a total concept from a form, touch and sound point of view.
Harley Davidson make another clear sound statement. Although in this product the sound of the engine and components is loud and not really environmental friendly it is seen as the major selling point of the product. The sound of the bike is an essential element of the product, it creates the identity of the bike; tough, powerful, dynamic an incarnation of a wild and free life. Harley Davidson even had to patent their sound because competitors tried to copy it.

In the software industry, the Apple Macintosh computer shows how sound design can contribute to giving a high quality, trustworthy brand image. When starting up the Mac it welcomes you with a warm comforting boom. A sound which gives you the feeling of entering the joyful, positive world of the Mac, easy and pleasant to use. The start sound sets the atmosphere in which you are going to work for the rest of the day.

In the food industry it is difficult trying to sell something because of its taste without being able to try it. Therefore the advertisements for food are very much focussed, next to the visual image, on sound. The televisions adverts for a Dutch chips brand named Crocky focuses on the enormous crack of the chips. It sounds so extreme that it cracks your television screen. Crispy sounding chips becomes the embodiment of a fresh and tasty product.
The same happens in the 7Up advertisement. The sound of opening your 7Up can changes your warm sunny environment into a cool and fresh, rainy place. Just what you need on a boiling hot day.

Functional Identity
But we should not forget what sound could also do to enhance next to the emotional aspect, the functional identity of the product. Sound can be used to explain how to use a specific product; it can be used to understand the product better.

The identity of a product consists of a functional and an emotional side. The examples mentioned so far all try to achieve a specific brand identity by adding a sound with a strong emotion being the promise of the brand values into their product.

By contrast, an example of a functional identity comes in the office where you now find copy machines where by listening you hear how and where your copy is transported through the machine. You know exactly where the paper is by its sound. This is called functional auditive feedback. It teaches the consumer how the product is working and in case of a problem he or she knows immediately where the paper is stuck.

In certain situations auditive feedback can be of life or death importance. When a big truck is driving backwards, it warns those in its surroundings by giving a beep signal. A signal which is very impersonal not having any relation with the truck itself, but when heard outdoors and in that specific situation, clear enough for a passing person to be warned, even in a noisy environment.
It seems that it is a known joke that our telephones, our microwaves, our alarm clocks and even backward driving truck use the same auditive beep. A beep which gives in all these situations a different feedback. It would be great when each product had his own clear language without ending in a designed cacophony.

This is a job for sound designers within consumer electronics. Changing present sounds or adding extra sounds to create appropriate auditive feedback for the different products. And if these sounds immediately incorporate the brand values of the company then they have done a marvelous job.

But that is not that easy. We create products for people, people with certain expectations and earlier experiences with our products and their sounds. Are they open to new auditive proposals? Would they prefer a change? Are they aware of the present sounds of our products? All questions which first have to be answered, before starting to create new proposals.

Sound design is an emerging discipline which brings with it great opportunities, both in terms of brand and product identity as well as in terms of bringing functional benefits. This is a real challenge for the future of the sound design department within Philips Design: to contribute to the creation of useful, pleasurable consumer products that will sound together in harmony and delight the users.