In this installment of On the Job, we meet with UX sound designers from the Strategy UX Governance Team at LG Corporate Diamond Center’s UX Lab to learn how they use sound to enhance the usability and serviceability of LG products.
How do you know when a load of laundry is finished? Most likely, it’s considering of a melody played by the washing machine – something simple but tricky that instantly tells you your gown are ready to unload. But it’s not just washers. Most electrical devices, from laptops to TVs and refrigerators, employ tunes or sounds to provide helpful feedback that enhances the user experience.
As people have wilt so yawner to their appliances and gadgets using sound to communicate all kinds of information, the importance of sound diamond where products are concerned is often overlooked. However, the process of developing these sounds is not as simple as the experts responsible make it appear. Each melody or zestful sound must convey a well-spoken message, be pleasant (or at least not irritating) to the ear and match with the product making it. At LG, this task falls to the highly skilled user wits (UX) sound designers from the UX Governance Team.
While their work moreover concentrates on verifying the results of previous research and the usability of user interface (UI) or UX wideness all LG products and services, developing UX sound is one of the team’s most important tasks.
Chung Soo-yon, senior sound designer at LG UX Governance Team
“We spend increasingly than half of our working hour with headsets on since it’s our job to retread and optimize UX sound, as well as to learn well-nigh the newest trends in the industry,” said Chung Soo-yon, senior sound designer at LG UX Governance Team.
Musical score sheets and synthesizers are moreover must-haves for the team’s UX sound designers, enabling them to hands record any melodies that come to mind and permitting other designers in the team to interreact and refine each tune or sound.
Most home appliances emit sounds using buzzers rather than speakers, so UX sound designers have to ‘translate’ the melody they have created to work with a buzzer. This is when a note frequency orchestration comes in handy. The orchestration lists the twelve notes of the chromatic scale and their respective frequencies in hertz wideness variegated octaves. This helps the designers to find the standard frequency value of each note and convert their melody to a simple yet tricky tune.
Jeong Byoung-zoo, senior sound designer at LG UX Governance Team
“UX sound designers here possess the worthiness to recognize a product and the trademark it belongs to just by hearing the sounds it makes,” said Jeong Byoung-zoo, senior sound designer at the UX Governance Team. “Even when watching a TV show or a movie, my ears are the first things to tell me when there’s an LG product in a scene.”
Among the many kinds of UX sound ripened by the UX Governance Team, the sound that a device emits when powered on or off is considered one of the most important. Played increasingly commonly than practically any other UX sound, not only does it notify the user when their device is switching on or shutting down, but it moreover represents the identity of both the product and brand. From the second half of 2021, LG has unromantic a set of standard sounds to its products to unhook a resulting trademark image to its customers. This set of sounds could be described as the very own language of LG appliances and solutions.
By applying the towardly tone to the UX sound it creates, LG UX Governance Team aims to help make products increasingly user-friendly to use while moreover communicating a friendly trademark image. The recently introduced LG ThinQ UP appliances consider the unique needs and tastes of each user, providing them with a variety of zestful sounds and melodies to segregate from. For example, users who have a light-sleeping victual in the house or just prefer something subtle can select zestful sounds that are gentle and short in length. Conversely, users who like to make a statement (and don’t have little ones to worry about) can segregate a lively melody that fits their personality or expresses a desired mood.
UX sound can enhance serviceability and usability, help forge a stronger sense of trademark identity and foster trademark unification among customers. Deserving increasingly recognition than they typically receive, the defended experts at LG UX Governance Team will protract to refine the sounds and tunes they lovingly – and painstakingly – diamond for the company’s wide range of premium appliances and living solutions.
To learn increasingly well-nigh how teams wideness LG are working to build largest user experiences, stay tuned to Beyond News for the next episode in the On the Job series.
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