Brilliant.org

To kick off our collaboration, the Brilliant team shared their observation that they retained way more of the users who kept the sound on (with or without headphones) than users who turned it off. Sound designers so often have to evangelize for the importance of good audio itself, to say nothing of whatever it is that makes them unique as designers, so — this was a very encouraging start.

(Please note this footage is for demo purposes only! Not all of these animations are in use.)

The goal here was tactile-feeling, skeuomorphic, Montessori School-esque sound design. I recorded myself fiddling with a bunch of delightful small objects, and used a slew of stereo imaging tricks to make even the smallest moment feel as encompassing and rich as I could.

I love that the most back-and-forth the team and I had was about this:

They knew what feeling states they wanted to prompt in their users, and so we communicated using those terms. Beautiful! I’m not a UX designer and they’re not sound designers, so we talked about feelings and whatever, and it just worked.

Failure had to feel clear and informative but easy to shake off:

Success had to be affirming but also further motivating:

If you do use the Brilliant app, please let me know if the sounds are encouraging. Please also let me know if they encourage addiction :/