SOUND STORIES

THE CHALLENGE

‘Sound Stories’ was created through a 2 weeks collaborative project between the interaction design and product design students.

Children are considered to be carefree, but they also feel disappointments and worries that can be stressful to them. We wanted to create a moment of comfort and bonding between parent and child to cope with their daily worries to unwind and relax at the end of the day.

THE OUTCOME

During this project we chose to work on creating a calm experience for children to relax and go to bed to. It was important for us to make sure that we don’t create a product that replaces human experience but enhances it.

COURSE

Sound Design ( 2 Weeks), Umeå Institute of Design, Sweden, 2018

TEAM

Lea Bachmann, Zena Corda, Sonya Swan, Tim Schwarz,

ROLE

Interaction Design, Film Making(Process Video), Graphic Design.

Sound Stories is a story telling tool that children and parents can use to bond with before they go to bed. It is to be used as a trigger to create spontaneous and imaginative stories that can be built with parent and child together. The concept of Sound Stories is to help enhance the experience of story telling while it helps children refocus and become calm as they prepare to go to bed.

“How we can design a creative experience where a parent gives full attention to the child and together create stories, using sounds in a relaxing way?”

CONCEPT VIDEO

Sit back relax and listen to a wonderful story that will be narrated.

A FEELING OF TOGETHERNESS

Spending time with children and listening to them is a proven method to get them to calm down and relax. Moreover these kinds of activities are meaningful to their growth and creates a stronger bond between parent and child for the future.

Parents can use Sound Stories as an inspiration to create bedtime stories with their child.

A MOMENT OF IMPORTANCE

A moment where the child feels important and gets the opportunity to build a world with their parent. When a child is happy, sad or angry all they want is to be heard. While using ‘Sound Stories’ the child gets to be an active participant in the story that is being created by giving them the opportunity to pick the character they would want to hear about.

AN OPPORTUNITY TO REFOCUS AND BE CALM

A calm experience where kids can relax to ambient nature sounds as they go to sleep. The whole process of telling a story helps a child refocus and feel relaxed. The ambience of the story echos in the background while they sleep.

PRODUCT INTERACTIONS

Once you turn on the device the first thing you do is create the ambience for where you want your story to set in. The user can rotate the dial to choose from various nature sounds like rain, a fire place, meadows etc.

Once you set the environment you can select the characters that you want for your story and start placing them in the slots. On placing the cube in the slot you hear the sounds of the character you have picked. On tapping the block you can momentarily hear that sound louder again.

Nature sounds are known to calm the mind and relax you. On finishing the story you can press the timer button which fades out the character sounds to only play the ambient nature sound that the child can fall asleep to.

Storytelling is a transformative and magical experience for listeners. We chose to bring that experience of into the product when the user switches it on to transport them into a new world with endless possibilities.

THE PROCESS

CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT

The concepts that we were developing were targeted towards creating an end of the day calm experience. We wanted the product to be such that it can be used alone as well as with a parent . Strengthening the parent-child bond was an aspect that we felt was crucial when approaching this project.

MOODBOARD

We envisioned the product to create an atmosphere of warmth and comfort while interacting with it. Since the project is about creating stories we chose give a feeling of magic as well.

USER RESEARCH AND TESTING

During our user test some of the main insights that we received was that people wanted something that had few parts so that it would not get misplaced. They liked a linear approach of telling stories as it also guided them through the process. A lot of parents also mentioned that they use audio books and even tell bed time stories which assured us that we were taking the right direction for Sound Stories as it was a part of their daily behaviours and bedtime rituals.

STORYTELLING STRUCTURE WITH SOUNDS

Sound stories is a story creation tool and to do that we broke down the concept of a story. We divided the story into environment, characters, objects and activities. This made it easier to create a default step by step way a parent can create a story for a child. It was also essential to understand the types of sounds that make for an ambient story and understand how to layer these sounds.