The Emergence of Audio Design

Thursday 8/6: Registration is now closed. Citrix employees may attend without registration.

Both Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions (TGCS) and Lenovo are starting to get into "Audio Design" - a new emerging area of design for the two local computing companies.  Generally speaking, so much design focus in computing products to date has been on the visual, and that's hard enough to do well, but there is a new trend to give the aural sense more consideration, which if done well can truly complement and satisfy the overall UX.

Mark Molander and Brian Gross from TGCS, and Max Molander from Lenovo, will give a presentation on the emergence of audio design, which will include audio examples. For TGCS, Mark and Brian will talk about transforming existing 8-bit audio beeps and boops circa the 1980's with newly crafted modern tones meant to be more positive, encouraging, forgiving and usable too. The audio UX work spans products as well as research. The day of the piercing retail score scanners, which are essentially equivalent in tone to a baby's cry for attention, could be numbered.  We'll discuss our user research, design iterations, user testing, and give some recommendations. Lenovo's audio UX intern, Max Molander, will similarly discuss his audio design work and challenges improving the experience of Lenovo's ThinkPad line.

Max Molander and Brian Gross are both rising seniors at the University of Miami in their fairly unique and high acclaimed Music Engineering program, and also play in a band together called "Mint Trip". Mark Molander has been in the usability/UX field since 1988, worked for IBM for 25 years, filed over 100 patents, and last presented to TriUXPA in 2013 on "IBM Mobile User Experience". He currently is the Director of the TriUXPA Book Clubs.

We'll be providing food from Jimmy John's.