When to use sound? 

Keep in mind your audience. Sounds are not expected on websites like online newspapers or gubernamental sites. On the other side, they could be accepted on websites for children, music websites, online radios and such. 

Is the internet dumb?

Sounds could be used not only for advertisement, music and videos but also to improve usability like in the "real life", in desktop and mobile applications. For example, in the real life, closing a window makes a "click". Could you imagine a telephone that does no sound when you press a number? All this sounds are there to tell users that something is happening. These sounds should be as useful in the internet as in the real world. 

Unfortunately, many websites and web applications don’t use sounds. For example, Google Mail is not playing any sound when a new email arrives, something that is a default option for every desktop email client. 

What kind of sound?

In every application, desktop or web, the natural relationship between the sound and the action or information should always be respected. For example, clicking on a button should play a sound that resembles the mouse click, not a dog barking. 

These were a few tips using sound when designing a website. My general advice would be to use sound only if it is improving the user experience at you website. 

Cultural issues should be usually telling us how to operate something or how to behave in different situations. The problem with new machines like my washing machine is that there is no accepted conventions for dealing with them. Looking at it, there is no clear way to know what is controlling which function, all the bottoms and knobs are placed together without an apparent relation among them. 

Where to act? Humans expect to find signals for the correct operation. The logic should tells us a lot but in this case that is not happening. I thought, first I want to wash, later to dry, so I was expecting the first knob to control the washing and the second or third the drying. It was actually the other way round.  

How to act? After a long time analyzing the symbols flying around the knobs I assumed that the last big knob was there to control the washing part. The problem then was how to operate the thing. Is it something telling me not to wash my pullover at 60 degrees (celsius)? Why there are 22 different options?

At the end I was not able to dry my clothes, I couldn’t figure out how to operate the thing. 

I don’t think users care much about usability at the moment of buying washing machines or other products, but this behaviour could be changing. Many products are successful just because they are well designed, they care about the experience the user is getting and they are just easy to use. This applies to electronics, websites, services and many other things. 

Making things difficult to use is going to make your brand, service or product less trusty and it might end up affecting sales. My washing machine has lots of options, still my girlfriend washes by hand the clothes she likes the most because she doesn’t trust the [expensive] machine. So, was it good to put so many options? Why not testing with users? Am I gonna buy the same brand in the future?

I was using other smart phones before and none was bringing all that information on my palm in such a pleasant and fast way. The good thing about the iPhone is that this device is not only better than other smart phones, it is much better than other old time experiences. For example, going to the library, using an atlas or a dictionary and checking emails on a desktop computer (yes, that’s old style already!)

Using an iPhone is a pleasant experience but also, and very important, a fast one. Here some examples of things that now we do faster with an iPhone:

8 Seconds to find "Kuala Terengganu" on the map (bye-bye Atlas!)

3 Seconds to have a look at my calendar (and it is synchronize!)

4 Seconds to check my emails (and I don’t have to go to my computer!)

3 Seconds to call a contact stored in my favorites list (I hate to use the land line now!)

2 Seconds to check the weather forecast.

7 Seconds to translate a word from German into English.

28 Seconds to take a photo and mail it to a friend (nothing compare to this before).

16 Seconds to buy the last Björk album and start listening to it! (imposible to imagine this a few years ago).

9 Seconds to start reading the history of Italy on Wikipedia.

18 Seconds to find a list of nearby restaurants, with AroundMe app (totally imposible in the past, do you remember the Yellow Pages?)

19 Seconds to start listening my favorite Brazilian radio (selecting from a list of many others).

1 Second to listing to my digital music.  

All these work because of a great interface that makes the whole user experience just fantastic. What do you do faster with it? Or maybe with another mobile device?  

Mapoot is a real estate listings website with focused on Germany. Designing the property posting web form, we had the problem that the whole thing was too long. We tested with a few users and it was amazing to see the reaction of the people, all making gestures like "pufffff" and "wow, this is going to take time". 

Then we decided to split the form into 4 steps:

It’s important to label steps properly, so users could get an idea of what’s coming next. Splitting the long form was a great improvement in the website design: although the process of placing a new property in Mapoot was as long as before, users were not complaining!

I live in the Bavarian capital, Munich, one of the biggest cities in Germany. Here, every year the Oktoberfest, a huge beer-drinking party, takes place. Looking for information I’ve found the consumption of beer and roast chicken since the year 1980. I’ve also found the number of visitors and put all that data together.

As one plays with the graph, it is possible to see that as the number of visitors was going down, the liters of beers has been growing, with a huge jump in the last decade. This means that the people are drinking more alcohol (I’m not judging this behavior, just showing the numbers).

I thought it was interesting to notice how a graphic could open our eyes and wanted to share it with you:

Here there are two examples from two different companies (this article is totally independent, images are just examples).

The examples give an idea of how critical information could be displayed in an information dashboard. As charts, clocks and colors are typically used all together it is very important to be very careful with the dashboard design. If not, it is highly possible that the dashboard will not help finding the important information in the right moment: imagine that the dashboard is telling the user that something is not working and he just don’t notice it.

Tips for a Information Dashboard Design

1- Do not make excessive use of colors. Filling the screen with a lot of flashy colors is not going to make the user to pay attention but to avoid looking at it. Try to use pastel colors instead of hot red, for example. Keep in mind that many people are blind color, so try not to use color as the only way of driving people’s attention.

2- Put all the important information in one page. Try not to hide information behind menus, if you need to do so try to make the navigation fast. Splitting the information in different pages makes the dashboard less useful.

3- Do not display too much information, users can always look for farther details in another place. The aim of the control dashboard is usually to detect deviations and problems fast, not to provide reports.

4- Try to avoid unnecessary graphics. Have a look at the first example I gave (image 1), and notice all the excessive graphics. 

5- Choose the right media. Be extremely careful if you decide to use videos, animated images or sounds. They could be very annoying.