Sounds of Our Everyday Lives

ROLE

UI DESIGNER

DATA ANALYST

UX RESEARCHER

AUDIO EDITOR

TEAM

DR. EMMA VENDETTA

TIMELINE

2 WEEKS

YEAR

MAY 2020

This crowd-sourced Covid project features sound samples from participants’ everyday lives as they shifted during social distancing.

I conducted a mixed methods analysis of the dataset and then created a geospatial sound map of submissions for participants to listen to snippets of others’ daily lived experiences in the pandemic.

The goal of the project was to create a sense of community and togetherness through our digital collaboration.

Problem Space

During the Covid-19 pandemic, we found ourselves more distant from each other than ever before and yet connected by our devices. Our sonic environments shifted dramatically: the honking horns died down, the voices of children filled homes instead of schools, and colleagues chatted via video chat instead of in the office. I wanted to create a project that would reflect this shift and invite collaborators to consider the strange and the beautiful in their own sonic environments in this tough season.

Research Question

What sounds constitute the experience of “familiar”, “unusual”, and “meaningful” in our everyday lives during the Covid-19 pandemic? What themes in these sounds might connect us to each other despite social distancing?

Design Process

Participants were asked to collect and describe three sounds of their everyday lives: one familiar, one unusual, and one meaningful. A short description of the sound and its location accompanied each submission. Lastly, participants were asked to use location categories and affective quality tags to label the sound and its place of origin.

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