Is Your Business Too Noisy? | Hacker News Reader

Is Your Business Too Noisy?

juliantreasure.blogspot.com

Great post. As a sound engineer and someone who does sound for film, I'm blessed with good hearing and cursed with extreme sensitivity to noise. Most people don't think about it, but it has an enormous impact on mood and productivity, whether you operate a public place like a store or just have a radio in the corner of the office. An ugly sound environment (eg 3 sets of desktop speakers playing different TV feeds at low volume around an office) is horribly stressful and causes my productivity to evaporate. If there's a voice in the background (eg a TV or a podcast) I find it very hard to tune it out while I'm supposed to be reading.

Conversely, adding some natural noise (such as a little water toy, if the water is louder than the electric motor) can help smooth out the rough edges of otherwise unpleasant noise. And fairly inexpensive things like hard disk sleeves can significantly reduce the ambient noise in your office.

Don't get me started on sound in retail environments. I have fantasies about calling in an airstrike on the local 'easy listening' station; and actively seek to minimize my time in any store where it is played. By contrast, low-volume classical music will cause me to slow down and linger. There are two different 7-11 stores I regularly go into (I'm a big fan of their coffee) which have their radios tuned to the 'lite rock' and 'classic fm' stations, and you can likely guess which one I spend more at.

Safeway has a good strategy in this respect. They play generic pop, but it's very quiet, and they make occasional shopping announcements (of the 'great discounts on bread all this week' type), but only one at a time and so infrequently that it feels informative rather than obnoxious. Also, in the vegetable section they have a little gizmo that flickers the cabinet lights and plays a quiet thunder sound every time the automatic mister goes off, about once every 60 seconds. It's very unobtrusive. This was amusing the first few times, but I freely admit I've internalized as a reminder to buy vegetables every time I go there.

He spoke at TED: http://on.ted.com/48

And you might like "Designer forget sound design": http://juliantreasure.blogspot.com/2007/09/where-has-sonic-a...

I'm very similar in my reaction to noisy environments. Since most people don't experience (or perceive, at least) the same level of distraction, it's been a point of considerable contention throughout my life.

Separately, I'll mention my perception that soundscaping played an under-appreciated role in Starbucks' growth, particularly in creating that "vibe" that people were so hooked on during the early years of its major expansion. I don't mean the few "Hear..." stores, featuring some sort of extensive music kiosks, that they've now opened, but rather the well chosen, "alternative" / college radio-station-esque music that they played. This was provided by some sort of music subscription/compilation company -- I seem to recall that it also had "Hear" in its name -- that Starbucks apparently bought out at one point. I believe that for many Starbucks regulars, it was a sole "public/broadcast" source of rather intriguing music distinct from what was being shoveled out by the increasingly Clear Channel dominated radio dial.

I'm glad other people feel this way too. My wife is hearing impaired and one of our main criteria for grading restaurants is the noise level. We recently walked into a new neighborhood restaurant with high expectations, and we turned around and walked out before being seated because the noise level was so high (hard surfaces and close tables everywhere). And don't get me started on my office environment--checking voice mail over your speakerphone? Really?

Interesting article; I suspect that that mapping from "brick/mortar -> sound" to "online -> visual" also holds true.

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