The Lake explores role of audio in mobile user experience
The Lake from Maybe It's The Lighting on Vimeo.
The visual component of The Lake does one thing: it displays a single playing card, which the user can flip. It is through the audible dimension that most of the user’s experience is created.
As the user flips the playing card, the application generates ambient audio to create an ever changing soundscape, encouraging the user to explore their own imagination and stories in response to the sounds they are hearing.
It is best experienced through headphones.
The Lake highlights an under-addressed are of mobile user experience design – the audible dimension. The majority of user experience practitioners have a strong leaning towards visual solutions, often at the expense of tactile and audible elements which resonate strongly with users.
The application is by Patrick Juchli, Holger Müller and Bernhard Frey.
We will soon be initiating a new MEX Pathway, entitled ‘Enhance the audible dimension of mobile user experience’, which will be 1 of 6 Pathways explored at the next MEX event in London on 4th – 5th May 2011.
I’d love to hear from anyone working on audible experiences for mobile devices – please email mp@pmn.co.uk or call on +44 7767 622957.
[…] The Lake is an iPhone application which uses sound to stimulate the user’s imagination and generate their own story in response. It relies on sight merely to focus the eyes on a single point (in this case a playing card displayed on the screen), preventing visual attention from wandering elsewhere and ensuring the ears remain the primary channel of interaction. […]