Sketching Step in Sound Design: the Sound Designers' Point of View

Sound design consists in creating or modifying the sound of an object (car engine, Human Machine Interfaces ...) in order to add relevant information, improve the feeling, the perceived quality, or reduce noise annoyance.The European project SkAT-VG aims at understanding the process of creating a sound ex-nihilo, with a focus on the sketching step (which may be done by the designer alone or during a discussion with the client). It also aims at creating new tools and methods to facilitate the designers' activity. To understand the sound design process and sound designers' needs, interviews have been conducted with a focus on the two points addressed by the project: the sketching step and the use of vocalizations and gestures.First, designers are asked to present themselves and talk about their experience and their creation process in sound design. Then they describe the tools they would like to have. They are also asked how relevant they would find the use of vocalizations and gestures and how they would imagine this use (for sketching a sound in an interactive process, or in a discussion with the customer). Finally, some prototype tools are presented to get preliminary feedback on their usefulness and usability.