Sound Is All You Need: From Good UX to Great UX

So when we think about great design what comes to our mind is great visuals, sleek UI, some futuristic interface like holograms or some fancy visual graphics. That's what we all picture right? But here's the thing nobody really talks about, Sound.

If we trace back to history, way back to the primitive age, when there is no UI or laptop or any kind of tech stuff, back then if we want to convey information we used to do it using sound and signs. That was it. That was the whole communication system. And as technology evolved from the punching card to write code, to the first CLI, to the GUI, the way we interact with computers kept changing but sound was always there somewhere in the background doing its job quietly.

Sound Was Always There, We Just Stopped Noticing

Before GUI is introduced, there is only way for computer to pass down information to user, either use the text or use simpler sound effects. Back then sound was used but not that widely. When the new GUI interface is introduced to the user, the user found new way to interact with the computers. Today what we consider obvious like mouse clicking, dragging mouse, clicking button, controlling bunch of things, we today take for granted, all of this is first invented by someone and back then all of this new interface is brought to end user.

And in some or other way the sound came for rescue. The clicking button sound, closing and opening tab sound, increasing volume to decreasing volume, from the booting computer to shutting down computer. Sound convey information to user in much more cleaner way than UI for simpler or minute details. As we all know the devil lies in the details, and sound is that detail.

Vision Is Directional, Sound Is Omnidirectional

Now here's something really interesting that we don't really think about. Vision is directional, it demands your full attention. You have to look at the screen, you have to focus your eyes, you have to read. But sound? Sound is omnidirectional. It works in the background. You don't need to look anywhere, you just hear it and you know what's happening.

Think about it. When Google Maps needs to tell you "hey take a right turn" while you're driving, no pop-up could do that job safely. You can't be reading your screen while driving at 80 km/h. So what do they do? They play a reroute chime. Sound comes for the rescue. Again.

People Remember Sound

Now here's something for the business folks too. People might forget your brand name, brand colour, but if you create a brand theme tune? That sticks. Think about the Nokia iconic handshaking tone. The Windows XP opening sound. Or take example of Indian brands like Titan iconic tune, Airtel tune, there are many more examples but we get the point. People remember sound. It gets embedded into our memory in a way that visuals sometimes just can't.

When Physical Becomes Digital, Sound Fills the Gap

Now when the first iPhone is introduced it replaced the physical keyboard with the touch screen. But many were skeptical right? So what Apple did is that they introduced haptic and the sound over there as replacement for the physical touch. We have seen this so many times, every time a new company replaces something physical with the digital, then it started feeling just enough like physical.

Like with Apple Pencil, it started emitting the sound of pen rubbing against the paper. You're not writing on paper but your brain thinks you are because the sound is telling you so. And there are studies which show how different sounds and pitches could convey different meanings to us, as those are embedded into our memory from survival instincts to some natural actions.

The Research Actually Backs This Up

Now I'm not just saying all of this from my gut feeling. There is proper HCI research that backs this up.

Ma et al. did a study in 2014 on touch typing performance with keyclick feedback, published in IEEE. What they found is that when you add that clicking sound to a touchscreen keyboard, people actually type faster and make fewer errors. Microsoft Research also found the same thing in 2015, haptic keyclick feedback improves typing speed and reduces typing errors. So it's not just about feeling nice, it actually improves performance.

Sodnik et al. in 2008 studied auditory versus visual interfaces for use while driving and found that auditory feedback is significantly safer and more effective when the user's eyes need to be somewhere else. Which makes total sense if you think about it.

And there's even research from Nova Southeastern University on using auditory feedback in IDEs to help novice developers. Imagine your code editor giving you subtle sound cues when something compiles successfully versus when it fails, instead of making you hunt for that tiny red squiggly line somewhere in your code.

Now If You See, Smart Devices Already Get This

Your smart watch, your earphone, your headphone, all of this convey some kind of small or big information in form of sound. The little beep when your earbuds connect. The subtle ding when your Apple Watch detects you've completed your standing goal. These are tiny moments but they add up to make the whole experience feel alive and responsive.

AI and VR, Sound Becomes Even More Essential

Now the same thing is happening with AI. As AI is evolving, AI will find way to communicate with human which is going to be the path of least resistance, which could be using sound as medium. AI also started from text, same as the computers started from the punching machine to the CRT to GUI. Same way the AI and human interaction is going to evolve from text box to voice. We're already seeing this with voice assistants getting smarter every day.

And this is going to happen in the VR space too. When there is no physical surface, when you can't touch anything real, we need to give the user something to hold onto. We need to convey information to user and we need to use sound over there. Because in VR you remove all physical surfaces, and if there's no feedback, the user feels lost. Sound becomes the anchor.

But here's the catch, more sound isn't better sound. There's a point where every ping becomes noise and users stop hearing anything, including the alerts that actually matter. It's like that boy who cried wolf. If everything makes a sound, nothing is important anymore.

The Open Source Tools Nobody Is Using

Now here's what most developers don't realize, the open-source ecosystem already has solid infrastructure for sound design. We just aren't using it.

freedesktop.org Sound Theme Specification, there's an actual open standard that defines how event sounds should work across Linux desktops. It's well-designed, it exists, and almost nobody outside of desktop environment maintainers knows about it.

libcanberra, this is the library that implements that spec. It's LGPL-2.1 licensed, thread-safe, supports ALSA and PulseAudio backends. This is the actual plumbing behind GNOME's event sounds, and any open-source project can use it.

And then look at how GNOME and KDE handle sound completely differently. GNOME goes minimalist, few sounds, subtle, almost silent. KDE's community goes the other way with themes like "Ocean" and "Borealis" that are designed so that a dozen workstations in the same office wouldn't distract each other. Two completely different philosophies, both open source, both have something to teach us.

SND (snd-lib), this is an MIT licensed UI sound library available via npm. It has categorized sounds for taps, notifications, cautions, loading states, and even "celebration" sounds for when users complete a major goal like sending an email or finishing the last task. This toolkit exists and most developers have never heard of it.

Material Design Sound Guidelines, Google's framework categorizes UI sounds into primary sounds for system feedback on every interaction, secondary sounds for less frequent state changes, and ambient sounds for personality and emotion. A practical way to think about sound that any project can adopt.

So What Should You Take Away From This?

Sound isn't decoration. It's a functional design layer. It confirms actions, communicates system state, and reduces cognitive load on the user's eyes. Every other design dimension, colour, typography, layout, motion, has established open-source tooling, community discussions, and conference talks. Sound is the blind spot.

We ship projects with carefully considered visual design and completely absent audio design. That needs to change. And the tools to do it? They already exist. We just need to start using them.

References

Academic Research

Ma et al. (2014), A Study of Touch Typing Performance with Keyclick Feedback (IEEE)
Balters & Steinert (2015), The Influence of Emotion on Keyboard Typing: An Experimental Study Using Auditory Stimuli (PLOS ONE)
Microsoft Research (2015), Haptic Keyclick Feedback Improves Typing Speed and Reduces Typing Errors (World Haptics Conference)
Sodnik et al. (2008), A User Study of Auditory Versus Visual Interfaces for Use While Driving (International Journal of Human-Computer Studies)
Jacob & Mack (2018), Comparison of Feedback Modes for the Visually Impaired: Vibration vs. Audio (HCII 2018)
Nova Southeastern University, Auditory Feedback in IDEs to Provide Cognitive Support for Novice Developers
Apple (2020), US Patent No. 10,691,209: Haptic and Audio Feedback for Apple Pencil

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