I know what I am going to do when I am allowed to go to cafes again. I am going to buy myself a delicious breakfast. And I’ll buy you one as well. I am going to look for 5 people. I’ll ask them to test my work. With simple questions I am going to learn about 85% of the usability problems. Not like this: Did this notification sound give you the information you needed in your experience?

“More isn’t always better, Linus. Sometimes it’s just more”. – The Movie Sabrina (1995). Do large communities add more value than smaller ones According to British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, the “magic number” is 150. His theory concludes that we can only really maintain about 150 connections at a time.

We can hardly remember a time when all of this wasn’t possible. Online communication tools and social platforms enabled us to develop bigger communities more easily. But do we achieve so much more by making everything bigger? Sometimes people tend to focus so hard on making everything bigger that they lose sight of what’s really important.

Some people say that offline networking is better for those trying to increase their local presence. Others believe that online networking works best at all times. It’s faster, simple, and more efficient. Taking advantage of both worlds is what most people advise. Easier said than done. Of course, it pays off, but only if you are willing to do the hard work.

Most community initiatives fail before they actually start. This probably sounds familiar: You are invited to an event that introduces a new community. It’s a successful event, and all plans sound promising. But after three months you still haven’t heard anything else about it. A lot of initiators launch their plans with a big bang.

Relationships develop most naturally in the company of like-minded people who share an interest or passion. It is a good starting point, but we must realize that meaningful relationships require more than common unifying factors.

Events and meetups provide a great way to maintain relationships and meet new contacts. But because of the corona-crisis, everything is canceled. We can’t meet in person. So let’s find each other online. Reach out to new people, join an online event, and make sure to check in with people you already know.

Recently I’ve been reading a lot of stuff by Jezra Kaye. In my opinion, she is a very interesting author. She is also a speaker coach, speechwriter, and president of Speak Up for Success. In one of her blog posts, I recently read she wrote about writing a great talk. To me, the following inspired the most: “Give people a reason to care.”

Often UX begins each morning. “Hey Google, good morning.” A single phrase like this allows you to trigger a sequence of multiple actions, aka a routine. At first, people try-out ready-made routines that are available on Google Assistant & Amazon Alexa.

I think BBC inspires producing its own in-house voice assistant called Beeb. They removed their podcasts from certain Google products, and their radio stations are also disappearing from TuneIn. They must have realized that they were becoming one of many vying to sell their content

More people are consuming audio in places where they can’t engage with visual media. Managing your Brand’s identity through sound really makes a difference between being memorable and barely registering during opportunities like this. But it’s a challenge. Because from the moment we were born

Voice revolutionized the way we interact with technology and each other. We are now in a brand-new age of audio which fueled by the creation of opportunity. The audio revolution is a logical response to the fact that today’s consumers expect products and services

Personally: I live in Amsterdam, and our studios and offices are located near the central station. Our agency works on local and international cases. In my opinion, projects that take cultural differences influenced by geography, history, and religion into account are exciting.

Audio is part of every Brand’s identity. Whether you are managing it or not. It resonates your Brand’s Identity at every audio enabled consumer touch point where Brand influence takes place. It’s becoming more and more essential and valuable to devise an effective auditory strategy

I’ve been deeply fascinated by sound, acoustics, and perception since the moment I consciously discovered it’s power and influence. Audio is extremely effective when it comes to building trust. It can create deep emotional connections, enhances recall, builds relationships, and creates preference.

Through our workshops, consulting, writing, Voice- and Audio Branding programs, I help interesting companies and corporations to devise an effective audio strategy and back it up with meaningful action to create results. I’m often asked: “So you create sound logos and jingles?”

I’m a born-and-raised dutch boy from Amsterdam with a strong passion for sound. I’m proud to have created my own sound agency and a proven method to exploit the power of audio to manage your Brand’s identity through sound. I started my business four and a half years ago

It starts with a valid test design. Secondary research and in-depth interviews will help you learn about people’s wants, needs, and expectations: Your objectives. Perform routine tests and measurements to access your product’s ability to reach those objectives. Analyze the feedback and convert it into knowledge

Our digital lives form our desires: The aesthetics, sounds, music, images, and voices that fill our social feeds and online existence influence our perception. Based on how we perceive things, we develop preference and attraction to certain people, places, Brands, products, and services.

Dolby has been working on a new mobile app for recording and cleaning up audio under the codename “234,” first brought to the attention by TechCrunch. Unfortunately, the signup site has been deactivated. I would have loved to share some samples to discuss the quality of the app because I’m extremely curious.

Doing better starts with the realization that audio branding isn’t just creating a sound logo or
a bunch of branded jingles. It’s the systematic creating and execution of an entire audio
strategy to manage your Brand’s audible identity. Never forget the essential step of analyzing how

The game is about consumer expectations. Brands are challenged to push the boundaries of possibilities in pursuit of new ways to connect with consumers. The price is being chosen. Today’s consumers are conscientious about choosing only what they like. People decide quickly whether they’re interested or not.

People care less about your product’s features and all its competitive advantages. Instead, they care about the story that you sell and whether or not they feel connected to it. Propositions that genuinely resonate are emotionally driven. They are about mindshare and heart share.

Does your smartphone sound awful, or is it incredible how such a small device can produce such loud and relatively rich sound experience? One thing we know for sure is that most smartphones don’t sound bad because they were poorly made. It’s just incredibly complex to squeeze

The power of audio is that it has the ability to connect with people on an emotional level. In essence, all you are really trying to do when you’re trying to express yourself through audio is to get the audience to experience a particular feeling.

People are pickier than ever. We’re spoiled because there is so much content to choose from. Which is why we only spend time consuming content we feel connected to. If you are a content creator or advertiser, you need to be aware that it’s about being chosen.

For many people, the snooze button is a trap. It’s worth it to pretend that snoozing doesn’t exist because the quality of your sleep you get after hitting the snooze button is greatly reduced. You’re not getting the good quality sleep that you’ve been experiencing the whole night.

During The Magnetic Era of recording The first two Beatles albums, “Please Please Me” and “With The Beatles,” were recorded on the BTR (British Tape Recorder) two-track machines. Recording on the twin-track BTR machines meant essentially recording a live music performance because there was minimal opportunity for overdubbing.

The activity of making musical sounds with your voice brings joy to many people – but besides bringing joy, singing also positively influences your physical, emotional, and social health status. Singing is a natural antidepressant; it lowers stress levels, improves mental alertness, and broadens communication skills.

In my recent posts, I wrote about the value of knowing how you can strengthen and deepen the relationship that you have with your customers. I briefly described the importance of providing a great customer experience to maintain high customer retention rates and customer loyalty for a long time.

Consistency is also an essential factor when it comes to improving customer relationships.

To be consistent, creating a strong brand platform based on which you can make quick and meaningful decisions is essential. A brand platform is a set of brand tools including visual guidelines, voice branding guidelines, music branding guidelines, and more.

People buy into brands and not products. An interesting and powerful way to improve your customer relationships with your Brand is by creating a sense of community. Creating a sense of community gives your customers something authentic to feel connected to. It makes your Brand’s identity stronger, more approachable, and relatable to your customers.

While it’s a good idea to start podcasting to communicate with customers regularly it also helps to provide value, too. Precisely the reason why the podcast industry is growing extremely fast; the industry generated an estimated $479.1 million in revenue in 2018 and is expected to produce more than $1 billion by 2021

Sooner or later, every new technology becomes a commodity.

Which is why great Brand’s don’t follow trends; they’re not just designing faster, better, and more advanced products. They instead invest in managing meaningful relationships through new product and services.

Programmatic advertising on Spotify provides a great solution to do this. More than 100 million users worldwide now pay for Spotify Premium, the company has announced. Spotify reached the milestone by growing paid subscribers by 32-percent year-on-year. Including free subscribers, Spotify now has a total of 217 million monthly

On-demand audio streaming now accounts for more than 54 percent of total audio consumption. Streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, and Deezer are more popular than ever before, and streaming’s growth is shaping the audio consumption market.

Most immersive audio concepts have existed for decades. But the interest in immersive audio has increased enormously in recent years due to the growing popularity of stand-alone audio content and technologies such as augmented reality (AR).

I’m happy to share that I will be giving a workshop and talk at the VOICE Summit 2019, Newark, NJ: the world’s largest voice-tech conference attracting 5,000+ developers, conversational designers, startups, brands, agencies and executives at the forefront of the voice-first era.

The importance of building silence into a VUI design applies to all three. It’s just as important as knowing when to use sound. Let’s look at the first tip: “Never accept the feeling that your sound design is significantly slowing down your experience.” Even when your design is faster with implemented

Sounds specifically designed to enhance the user experience should be intuitive, functional, and easy to understand. They shouldn’t be obtrusive, distracting, and you most certainly don’t want your UX/UI sound design to be perceived as annoying.