UE BOOM sonification
Ultimate Ears (UE) was a company that was recently acquired by Logitech which made high end custom earphones. The brand was venturing into the competitive bluetooth speaker market. 2012
Goal
Sonification is the use of sonic icons to signify key bluetooth events was a new user touchpoint for Logitech UE. Such examples were a connection sound or a power off sound. The goal was to establish an intuitive design language that is unique and ownable to UE across products.
Research activities
Define the brief. Find & engage the creative team. Run research throughout the process. Project manage and meet delivery milestones. . Make the final choice of sonification schemes.
Insights
Key stakeholders had differing opinions of what the brand embodied which influenced their sound design preferences.
Prototyping was challenging but instrumental in finding the right sonic profile for the speaker.
Outcomes
Six “Instrument” based sound profiles for the Ultimate Ears brand. Which pivoted from a guitar based theme to a conga drum based theme as the branding evolved towards the attitude of UE Boom.
This sonification feedback exists to this day as part of an iconic brand defining product. Launched in May 2013.
Tools
UX Principles, Tender, Firmware updater, Likert plots
Early prototype
This is one of the simulations of the sonification experience. An audio edit with a dummy model of a speaker.
Powerpoint was also used to hack a button experience to the auditory icons.
These Likert rated questions were devised to see if the sonification soundscape prototypes captured the brand and the attitude of the music speakers.
For UE BOOM the soundscapes were changed to the Conga profile, primarily because it fit the attitude of the speaker better. UE BOOM ended up defining the brand itself and the Conga profile continues to this day on the product.
Recommendations
“Jan is extremely knowledgable, worked directly with my teams of branding composers and producers to help us understand the UI and was truly a leader who contributed a great deal to our successful sonic initiative. Jan has excellent leadership/ team management skills, and formidable in both the technical side as well as working with teams like mine and integrating all seamlessly, which is not an easy task. Audiobrain has had positive work experiences with Jan on many levels.”
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Audrey Arbeeny, Founder/ CEO/Executive Producer at Audiobrain
“I had the pleasure of working with Jan when Logitech was refreshing its audio product line. Jan had the role in embedding sonification as part of the products UX. It is a challenging task both from design perspective as well as internal decision making, and one that he handled extremely well. Jan's insights, based on his own experience and intuition, as well as informed by his research, were essential to the projects and I enjoyed our interactions and our collaboration.”
