The world on silent
Plan8 designs sonic identities, sound logos, brand music, and interactive audio so companies are as recognizable by ear as they are by eye.
Kristine Botros · Sound designer & Strategy
We can estimate that there are 8.3 billion mobile phones on this planet used by
approximately 5.3 billion people. There is no universal consensus or data that tells us exactly how many people keep their phones on silent, but from our own personal experience we each know that we ourselves, our friends, family, people next to us on the subway keep phones on silent.
Why the sound goes off
People keep their phones on silent for multiple reasons, a mother of a newborn
tums her phone on silent so that it wouldn't wake the baby up. The haptics can
create a loud noise if the phone is placed on a surface that amplifies the vibrations, so she might tum them off and set her phone to some visual feedback and that in turn becomes a habit that she never thinks twice about. Besides this example that could be arriving from personal experience, there are multiple others, that include notification overload, spam reduction, societal pressure or the wish to regain control over one's own focus, choosing when to pay attention to the notifications.
A mismatch, not a preference
These scenarios illustrate a clear mismatch between the designers intent and theusers desire and... this is why having a strategy and deliberate sound design in your app is no longer an option; it has never been an option or nice-to-have.
It is not that people want to have silent phones, they want to avoid hearing sounds that are untimed, intrusive, poorly made and causing fatigue or stress. This ties hand in hand with fundamentally designing how the app functions and how it pushes notifications for the user.
Yes, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but the gap between great and average is in taking all of the parts seriously - they make up the whole.
Our why
This is our why, the user, their experience and delight. We work towards a better sounding world where every sound is deliberate, made with a purpose, supporting a function, and created with beauty and excellence. Made by artists devoted to the craft, devoted to forever pursue excellence in their craftsmanship in creating these sounds.
Sound alone does not make the experience, it is heard in its context and is a part of an ecosystem. The ecosystem of an app consist of many moving parts and they each deserve great attention by designers that understand each of these parts
We have made sounds for products, apps, scanners, washingmachines, you name it and regardless of the product in front of us, we always do our utmost to create the best sound for the problem in front of us.