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I wouldn't be surprised if there was some psychology behind the choice of sounds when you tag the transit card. Just like visual "affordances" in UI design, the
by ytpete 10y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if there was some psychology behind the choice of sounds when you tag the transit card. Just like visual "affordances" in UI design, there may be certain audio characteristics that people will associate with "good" vs. "error," for example. I recall one study showing that people almost universally feel certain shapes and word sounds are "friendlier" than others (albeit by very subtle margins). And I believe in many languages people interpret pitch inflections to tell when a sentence is continuing vs. finished - think about reading someone a serial number out loud, and how if you were to pronounce the last number the same as all the others it will sound like you left the sentence dangling, with more digits still to come.
I'd be really interested to read anything more concrete about audio affordances though, if anyone knows of links to further research, etc!
- harperlee 10y agoI can list at least three linked ones: with two beeps, if the second's pitch is higher, means "on" or "ok" or "up", whereas if the second's pitch is lower, the other way around. A fantastic book on how these are all related is "metaphors we live by". I'd expand on this but I'm typing on mobile and on a hurry. But seriously: read the book. It takes a long afternoon. It's great, short, illuminating, and not excessively dense or padded.
- anigbrowl 10y agoYeah, there's quite a lot of this but I can't think of any good references offhand. When doing audio logos I've always looked to catchphrases and famous movie quotes and tried to emulate the underlying intonation/cadences. I'm not aware of this knowledge being systematized anywhere though.
- ytpete 10y ago"Audio logos" - that's a fascinating concept I've never really thought about. Any recommended reading about that field?