▸ A field guide from the book Sonic UX (MIT Press)

Design methods for everything you hear.

Questions to ask about sound — and the methods to answer them. A companion toolkit to Sonic UX: The Science of Sound in User Experience Research.

In the book — chapter & section references inside each card Speculative — new methods in progress at the lab
00:00 QUESTIONS01:10 DISCOVER02:20 DECIDE03:15 MAKE04:10 VALIDATE05:30 FUNDAMENTALS06:20 TOOLS
TRK 00

Start with a question

Research starts from the questions, not the methods
Not sure which questions are yours? Walk through them by stage — what sound could do, what to ask before you have any, and what to test once you do.
Use the question walkthrough →
TRK 01

Discover

Listen first
Understand your users, their context, and what sound already does in their world — before designing anything.
TRK 02

Decide

Frame & plan
Formulate the right questions, choose the right test, recruit the right listeners, and design a protocol that won't bend your data.
Two tools for this phase
Formulate the questions → Choose what to measure →
TRK 03

Make

Sketch in sound
Prototype sonic ideas fast — with references, your voice, props, and video — before committing to production.
Two tools for this phase
Pin down the palette → Review a draft together →
TRK 04

Validate

Measure, don't guess
Subjective measurement methods — from paired comparisons to descriptive analysis — plus psychophysiological measures for what listeners can't self-report.
TRK 05

Fundamentals

Ground rules
Accessibility, cultural sensitivity, team building, stakeholder communication, and honest analysis — the groundwork under every method.
TRK 06

Show it to people

Take one into the room

Eight small tools that run in your browser and pair with the methods above. Nothing uploads, nothing is stored, and none of them need an account — open one, use it, and send the result on to whoever needs to see it.

TOOL 01 · DECIDE · pairs with E-01

Question walkthrough

Work out which questions are actually yours, stage by stage — what sound could do, what to ask before you have any, and what to test once you do.

Open the tool → TOOL 02 · DECIDE · pairs with V-01–V-13

Choose what to measure

Match a research question to a test that will actually answer it, and see what each one costs you in time and participants.

Open the tool → TOOL 03 · DECIDE · pairs with E-08

Sonic mood board

Curate reference sounds into two or three candidate directions, and agree what “right” sounds like before anything gets made.

Open the tool → TOOL 04 · MAKE · pairs with M-05

Audio style tile

A one-page sonic palette a team can sign off — exemplar sounds, their roles, and the do’s and don’ts — exported as a package you can send to anyone.

Open the tool → TOOL 05 · MAKE · pairs with V-03

Sound review

Waveform and spectrogram on one timeline. Everyone marks the moments that catch their ear, and the notes merge anonymously so the room discusses the same timecodes.

Open the tool → TOOL 06 · MAKE · pairs with M-06

Granular soundboard

Sketch with grains — pull a recording apart and audition textures before committing to a direction.

Open the tool → TOOL 07 · VALIDATE

Ready to ship?

A last pass before it goes out: what still needs checking, and what you are quietly assuming.

Open the tool → TOOL 08 · VALIDATE · pairs with V-10

Ask your users

It shipped. Find out what people actually hear once the sound is living in the world rather than in a test.

Open the tool → TOOL 09 · NOT BUILT YET

Something missing?

These get built when a project needs them. If there is a step you keep doing by hand, tell me what it is.

Email me →
TRK 07

Where these get used

Speculative work

The methods marked ⚡ speculative are still being tested, mostly by making things with them. What comes out lives in two places: art projects, which run in a browser, and speculative sonic artefacts, which are drawn rather than built.