The study of sound and shape effects on design

Exploring our environment in everyday life, multiple sensors are frequently applied in the learning processes. Previous design research mainly considered users’ visual perception in terms of how they perceive an object visually and how they feel about the appearance of a product. Little research was focused on the investigation of the relationship between sound and shape characteristics. This study attempts to focus on the exploration of the cognitive relationship between object shape and sound effects. 54 participants (male 25, female 29; ages 18–25 years) were invited to participatory the experiment. Two variables experiment (i.e., shapes x sounds) were conducted in this study. Six types of stimuli including human, cars, animals (i.e., natural objects), cones, cubes, and spheres (i.e., artifacts) were adopted in the experiment. Each type of stimulus was displayed in pairs (e.g., large volume and small volume) on the screen. Audio stimulus was played after visual stimulus to help participants match the audio and visual stimuli. The results showed that there are significant congruent relationships between shape and sound. Participants were able to perceive and identify the larger volume of objects and to associate them with bigger sounds; in contrast, the smaller volume of objects to associate with the smaller sounds. Moreover, a small volume of objects is congruent with high pitch and low volume of sound. In visual identification, the shape with sharp angles is in accordance with large volume and high pitch of sound, while the curved shape appears to be congruent with small volume and low pitch of sounds. However, participants are likely to have difficulty in matching circle and square shapes with the sounds assigned. The results of this study should benefit designers in the development of interfaces enhancing shape and sound and attempting to have consistent sensations to users’ mental model.