A better way to design the future things of everyday life is to use richer, more informative, less intrusive signals: natural signals (p59).
Implicit communication is an important component of the design of intelligent things because it informs without interruption, annoyance, or even the need for conscious attention (p62).
Because sound can be both informative and annoying, this raises the difficult design problem of understanding how to enhance its value while minimizing its annoyance (p64)... .Implicit communication can be a powerful tool for informing without annoying (p66).
---------Norman, 2007, chapter 3
Here is my first example: I bought a new humidifier recently and put it in my bedroom. It is so noisy when the fan embedded the humidifier is working. The sound let me know it works well but I could not bear it and fall asleep if I keep it working all night long. For the sake of health, I choose an expediential way—turning it on about 2 hours before I go to bed, which makes my bedroom moist enough and turning it off when I go to bed, which ensures me to have a sound sleep in the moist temperature. I keep suspecting if it is the reason for the store to have it on sale. I am also wondering if a more expensive humidifier would avoid this problem. In this case, “comfort noise” is not applicable. I felt that not only I but others prefer quiet to noise as the sound here is more like an intrusion annoying us in our lives.
On the contrary, there is another opposite example from my kitchen, which well applied sound to interact with me—a normal daily user. That is my microwave---one of typical good designs in my kitchen. My experience on it is pleasurable, satisfactory and enjoyable. Believe it or not, I was sometimes interrupted by other kitchen issues which usually made me forget what I had put into the microwave. I just keep doing other things and neglect I should take out the food from it. In this case, my microwave makes a sound “da da, da da” every 30 seconds until I take the food from it. In this way, it seems to remind me that I had something in the microwave, giving me a warning like” “Attention! It’s time to take it out! ” That’s so useful and convenient, isn’t it? However, one of my friends has no this interesting experience like me. She usually uses her microwave to heat a cup of milk or tea. As her microwave is not an updated product, it does not have a remind-like functionality to remind her of this thing. Thus, she sometimes forgot to pick up food from microwave until the next time she had to reuse microwave to heat other food, then you can imagine what happened—Yes, when she open the microwave, she suddenly found her old stuff was still in it. As such, she complains a lot, and the same complaint goes to her laundry machine. Although the laundry machine gives her a sound reminder that it finishes washing, but if she was interrupted and did other things first instead, she would definitely forgot her clothes and they would stay in the machine several hours until she realized it. I agree with her that the washing machines should be also invited a sound to remind users of things that are still inside it.
For these needs, sound is so helpful for those Mr. and Mrs. Forgettable. As sound is very necessary in these cases, another question emerges: what sound should be used for specific product? Back to my microwave case, I think the sound of “Dada, dada” is appropriate, it is not like music but at least it is not annoying and acceptable for me. Whereas, different users have different tastes. Even the natural signals are to be used, it might also annoy others if the users are not in a mood. So, it is really hard to satisfy all the users at the same time. For instance, like the sound for emergency or ambulance car, I frankly don’t like this type of sound, making me nervous and anxious, but I am well aware that it is in need for our society. No matter how, for designers, the fundamental principle it to minimize its annoyance as much as possible.
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