I'm continuing an arc started yesterday in What's the best use of sound files Online? and presaged in Behaviors and Engagement Mechanics, Part 1 about the use of sound files online. So far I've discussed visitor expectation and given an example of how to both meet and exceed visitor expectation with a little RIA programming.
This time we're going to touch a little on sound psychology and how that effects behaviors and engagement mechanics.
Different people will respond to sound events in different ways (duh!) and one of the most basic is one of the least appreciated; there are people who are drawn to sound and people who are repelled by sound. In other words, given a sound, any sound, some people's first impulse is to get closer to it, to listen more intently, to pay attention. Other people's first impulse upon hearing the same sound will be to get away from it, to shut it out or shut off whatever's making the sound, to become irritated and upset. These are the extremes of how everyone responds to sounds (see figure).
. The line between Attract and Repel is straight and monodimensional because the ends are polar opposites on the same axis . Most people are aware that sounds are not simple one or none, all or nothing types of things. Sounds can be loud, quiet, bass, soprano, and the list is way to extensive too get into here.
What happens is that our Sound axis is actually many, many axes, something like the next figure.
This figure is showing that a given individual may be attracted to soft sounds and repelled by loud sounds. A sound played at a whisper will get and keep their attention while the same sound played at a shout will cause someone to never come to a site again.
This is the another example of knowing as much as possible about your audience's expectations can help in the design of the websites.
More to follow.
Before closing this post, I want to thank the reader who emailed me about What's the best use of sound files Online?, "Saaaay... that's a nice blog you have there. ... And I like how you extrapolated beyond music to the more general (and excellent) question of the use of sound. Also very much like the idea of going up the curve on volume on mouseover- respectful to the user and (feels like- most important) more control in his/her hands. Cool." My thanks. My reward is knowing my work is appreciated. Also, many thanks to the folks at Coremetrics who emailed me about my suggestions for using RIA to create a hover event in What's the best use of sound files Online?, "...interestingly a few of our customers have thrown the tag on an object hover over only if x time has elapsed. This way they don't track the casual or cursory mouseover, only those that signal intent."
Good to know we're all on the same track, isn't it?
» What's the best use of sound files Online? (part 3) from BizMediaScience
More on WebSites and the Complexity of Sound Events [Read More]
Tracked on: December 18, 2006 3:25 PM | Permalink to Trackback