Details
10 days, MFA, 2019
Sound, interaction and experience design
Group project together with: Zena Corda, Tim Schwarz & Lea Bachmann
Challenge
Children are considered to be very carefree, but they also experience worries that can be stressful for them. Media and technology also often have a bad effect on kids, it effects their sleep and social interaction.
Our research showed that there are different ways for parents to help comfort their child such as spend time with them, listen to them and build daily routines. This inspired us to design a concept that strengthens the relationship between parent and child and gives them a daily routine together. We wanted to create a moment of comfort and bonding between parent and child to cope with their daily worries to unwind and relax at the end of the day.
Concept
We designed a story telling experience for children and parents to together create stories, using sounds in a relaxing way. We call the concept Sound Stories.
Sound Stories can be used as a trigger to create spontaneous and imaginative stories together as a daily routine. It simplifies and improves the relaxing bedtime story telling for the child by giving the user inspiration of what the story can be about. Sound Stories provides the opportunity for the user to choose an environment, character, activity and object at the cubes for building a story. A story with sounds.
How can we create a moment of comfort and bonding between parent and child to cope with their daily worries, and to unwind at the end of the day?
Through our research we found out that nature sounds are the most relaxing sounds
The solution
Final concept video
Process video
CURIOUS TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE PROJECT?
Continue further down to view more of the Final concept, the Design process, my Role in the team and Learning outcome
Final concept
Sound Stories enhance the experience of story telling while it helps children to refocus and become calm before going to bed
The device consists of a dial with a built-in speaker and three cubes. The experience of Sound Stories is turned on by turning the dial, where the user can choose from a variety of ambient sounds which create the environment which the story is set in. Other elements, such as characters, objects or activities can be selected by placing cubes into the device while making up the story. When a cube is placed the sound of it starts to play in the background.
The product can be placed and used in many ways to be as playful as possible. The cubes are stuck to the board with magnets to discourage falling off when carrying the product or handling it in bed. The illustrations on the cubes are embossed to make them possible to feel when it’s dark or if the user is blind.
The button for on, off and timer is placed at the end edge of the product, as well as the charge input and level buttons. The pattern of the speakers are placed on both top corners of the product to spread the sound in many directions.
The rotation wheel of the product can be rotated to find a desired environment sound. The chosen environment is lighten up.
The three key parts of sound stories
Daily ritual together
Parents use Sound Stories as an inspiration to create bedtime stories with their child. The cubes can also help the child to express feelings and to process the day.
A moment of importance
A moment where the child feels important and gets the opportunity to influence the story and build a world together with the parent.
An opportunity to relax
A clam experience where kids can relax to ambient nature sounds as they are about to sleep. The sounds reminds them for example of the story they just were told and gives them time to reflect and process the day.
How to design magical sounds?
Interaction with Sound Stories
1.turning on
A longer click on the button turns on the product with a sound feedback. The sound is a three step rising jinder with an echo. Our aim was to make the sound feel magical, like to open a door to a magic world.
2.Setting an environment
Different environment sounds can be explored by rotating the wheel.
3.cube interaction
The sound from the cubes appears when placing them into the board. When placing the cube or when touching it again after it’s placed the sound of the cube gets louder before it goes back to normal. A sound can be muted by placing the blank side of the cube upwards on the board.
4.Setting the timer
When the story telling is over and it’s time for the child to sleep the timer function can be used by clicking the button. The timer makes all cube sounds fade out slowly. Only the environment ambient sound inspired by nature, will continue while the child falls asleep, as it’s the most relaxing. After a time the product turns off automatically.
Responsible design
We have tried to design Sound Stories as sustainable as possible with separable parts and a broad area of usage to make the life of the product longer. It’s designed to fit both children and grown ups with a timeless and functional design.
Sound Stories is a concept that can grow with the child and be used for many years. The cubes can be changed to new, different ones and if the user for example doesn’t like stories anymore the product can be used as only a speaker, for listening to sounds when going to sleep.
Color material finish
The colors of Sound Stories are well explored. Through our research we found out that blue colors are the most calm, why we chose to use three, soft color tones from a blue scale on the cubes.
The product consists of one main board made of recycled PP plastic with a frosted glass on top of the rotation wheel, a wood piece and three cubes which also are made of recycled PP plastic. All materials can be separated which enables easy repair of a broken component.
Design process
Identified problems:
Some children don’t want to sleep in their own bed
Children can have a hard time relaxing and cooling down
Media stress (kids get smartphones earlier and earlier)
The child can experience another type of stress than adults, which could be hard for the parents to notice
Parents can find it hard to know how to interact and talk with the child after a day without each other
Some parents don’t have the fantasy or energy to come up with their own stories
From the beginning of this project we only had the topic “Stress” which we directly changed to “Kids in stressful situations”. The first day of the project we explored this topic and what problems there are for kids, how they meet stress and what affects them. We sent out surveys to parents and did some interviews.
After that we started brainstorming solutions of the identified problems. This was where the ideation process started, which was the biggest part of the project and something we did together as a group. It took one week of ideation in different steps before we had the final concept and the design of it.
Ideation
1. The first stage of the ideation was a lot about brainstorming and defining the brief and what problems we wanted to solve.
2. All brainstorming sessions finally lead us to three different design directions, which we evaluated and did hours of user testing with.
3. After the user testing and comparing of the design ideas we took all good parts from each concept and created Sound Stories.
Sound design
The sound board for Sound Stories
I created all the product/operator sounds (on, off and timer). I wanted the sounds to feel magical and the same time give a clear feedback to the user
I created the sounds in Massive
Then I adjusted the sounds from Massive in Adobe Audition
We used a LED in the model for lightening upp the environment illustrations
Putting all model parts together
the crew behind sound stories
We had a lot of fun together as a group, both while working and off work!
Presentation day!
My role in the team
The first week we all worked together with the small research with interviews and surveys and the ideation process with brainstorming sessions, brief writing and decision makings. As well as with the concept ideas, mock-ups and user testing with evaluation
When the concept idea was clear, me and Tim continued with the design of the product. We did some sketches and tried out variations in CAD and Photoshop and presented them for the rest of the group to get their input before making our own design decisions
While Tim continued with the final CAD (based on our exploration and decisions), I created the product/operator sounds (on, off and timer) in the program Massive
The whole group was involved in the model making, working in shifts. Everyone helped with the sanding and to put all parts together in the end
Together with Lea, I choose the colors of the cubes and the product
I did all the color mixing and painting of the model by myself
Me and Lea made the editing and premiere work with the final solution video of Sound Stories (where I’m also a character in the movie)
Together with Zena, I did both the concept presentation and final presentation
Learning outcome
Sound design - how to make a sound board, create sounds, edit sounds and use Massive and Adobe Audition
Interaction design - by working together with two interaction designers I feel I have learned a lot from them about interaction design and also their way of working in a project
Experience design - how important sounds are in a product and how sounds influences the user experience with the product
To make a movie in Adobe Premiere and how to prepare for a movie shoot
I always learn a lot from working in a group as well, it fits me really good