One of the pet peeves that creeps up on me at times as I explore multimedia is the use of sound. I ran across two sites yesterday that picked at that particular peeve, and I want to provide a note of caution for multimedia producers: leave sound control to the surfer.

The two sites in question are Ifra’s newspaper techniques web 2.0 special edition and the Learning Newsroom initiative home page.

newspaper techniques’ sound violations are relatively minor. In this “print-to-web” format, to “turn a page,” you click on the upturned page mark in the lower right corner. When you do, you will hear a little “page turning” sfx (sound effect). This also happens whenever you click on a “link” in a page.

Aside: I have never in my life turned a page from the bottom, so why did they design it to do so for the Internet? Usually, I turn pages from the top. Anyone have any thoughts on that?  On further research, I found that I do at times turn the page from the bottom, only when I’m turning with my left hand. Still, I’m not sure this is how most people would turn pages in a magazine. I suppose it’s like the old toothpaste debate - squeezing the middle or from the bottom of the tube.

The Learning Newsroom’s auditory violations are much more annoying, IMHO. The home page is designed in Flash, and while the content is loading, you get these sfx that I equate to a FOX network football intro video. Whooshes and metallic clicks that are totally unnecessary to the experience. And after the page loads, moving your mouse over one of the left navigation elements produces a sound like a screen sliding open (I guess). If you click on the nav element, another sound accosts your ears, something that sounds like air being let out of a tire (psssst). To cap it off, I can’t find anywhere on the page where I can turn these sfx off.

Neither Ifra nor Learning Newsroom need these effects, and I’d be willing to guess that their target audience wouldn’t miss them if they were gone. I frequently surf the web while listening to music. Obtrusive sound effects ruin the music and the experience of the web site for me. And if I’m surfing with the sound on my computer muted (which I’m liable to do in the library, or at an airport or coffee shop), then your sfx are totally lost on me as a user. In the case of Ifra’s site, I have to mute my computer just to keep that sound from resounding through the office suite when I turn a page.

These sfx are a step down from sites that force music on you when you arrive at their home page, and don’t give you any way to turn the sound off, or make it difficult to locate. Thankfully, I don’t run across many of these, but when I do, it’s a sure bet I’ll never visit the site again unless I’m using it as a negative example for a class.

Lesson: Don’t force sound on surfers unless there’s a huge reason to do so. The only sites I might suggest such sounds for would be movie promo sites or sites for computer games.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 8th, 2006 at 8:27 am and is filed under Multimedia views, Tech Talk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.