Konftel – Sound Design

Sound design, a 2 week team project with with Erik Borg.
Sound design is not something we usually do as product designers, therefore it was important for us to find a way to work with it. Not only did we have to learn new tools, but we had to create new methods of working (some of those methods made it into the curriculum for the project the following years).



RESEARCH
The research revealed that the conference telephone contributes to the atmosphere in aconference room. Dialing patterns differ between users. The mute function is important. The participants and their status are not clearly represented, leading to the risk of participants feeling left out of the conversation.The survey showed that the current sounds are not in line with our strategic vision for Konftel.




STRATEGIC MAPPING

Using the RISK diagram we analysed the market space for Konftel among the competitors. The decision was then to push it into a more innovative area while still remaining professional.




SOUND BOARDS

Since neither of us had a deep musical training, we decided that we needed a ‘common-ground’ to discuss sounds. After some research into terminology and sound editing tools we came up with making sound boards – a way for us to understand sound in a visual way and to find a common language when speaking about it and designing new sounds that would be not only coherent among themselves but also with our vision for the brand.




SCENARIO

Scenario illustrating workflow of a typical conference call. Note the formlessness of the device – it was important for us not to focus on form-giving at the start, we wanted form to enforce the sound and light, and not to dictate the design.




MODEL MAKING

1. Double sided milling
2. Vacuum forming
3. Painting and fitting of components
4. Arduino with Daisy Mp3 – making sound come from the model
5. Light ring – using RBG LEDs and an arduino platform we made a ‘slide-show’ of light patterns to illustrate the storyboard for the presentation.