Subtle Sound Design - Designing for Experience Blend in a Historic House Museum

Authors: Mia F. Yates, Anders S. Løvlie
Year: 2024

Subtle Sound Design - Designing for Experience Blend in a Historic House Museum

Summary

Yates and Løvlie report a research-through-design study of a digital sound installation at Bakkehuset, a historic house museum in Copenhagen. The prototype used hidden speakers, period-inspired voices, music, and domestic sound effects to evoke the social atmosphere of Kamma and Knud Lyne Rahbek's early-1800s home without disrupting visitors' sense of authenticity. Visitor interviews before and after installation showed that most visitors valued the sound as atmospheric, life-giving, and supportive of imagining past life in the house. The authors argue that subtle, open-ended sonic augmentation can communicate immaterial cultural heritage in historic houses while avoiding intrusive or screen-based museum technology.

Important Keywords

  • Historic house museum: a museum setting that preserves and presents a historically significant home.
  • Museum experience design: designing visitors' interpretive and sensory experience of museum spaces.
  • Digital sound installation: a technology-based sound layer added to the museum environment.
  • Immaterial cultural heritage: intangible cultural qualities such as voices, routines, social life, and atmosphere.
  • Hybrid museum experiences: experiences blending physical heritage spaces with digital media.
  • Seamless design: integrating technology so it supports the setting without drawing attention away from it.
  • Authenticity: the perceived fit between the sound design and the historical character of the place.
  • Visitor imagination: visitors' active construction of scenes and meanings prompted by subtle sounds.
  • Atmosphere: the mood or felt quality created by the combination of place, sound, and interpretation.

  • Bakkehuset: the historic house museum used as the paper's design case.

  • UX evaluation: evaluation of emotion, meaning, aesthetics, context, and usability.

  • Field evaluation: evaluation in natural use settings.
  • Anticipated UX: expected or imagined experience before actual use.
  • Non-instrumental quality: experiential quality not reducible to task efficiency.

Important Concepts

  • Experience blend: Digital augmentation should merge with the physical museum environment and visitors' motivations rather than pull attention away from the house.
  • Subtle sound design: Invisible, non-screen-based sound can add a digital layer while preserving the visual and material character of a historic interior.
  • Immaterial heritage: Bakkehuset's key heritage includes not only objects and rooms but also the former social atmosphere, conversations, music, and conviviality of the house.
  • Authenticity as experience: The study distinguishes factually original objects from visitors' subjective experience of something as authentic or real.
  • Open-ended atmosphere: Short, fragmented, non-literal sounds gave visitors hints rather than a full narrative, letting them use memory and imagination.

  • Social flow: Pauses, limited placement in one room, and non-demanding audio helped visitors remain in control of their visit and talk with companions.

  • Experience evaluation should consider lived experience, emotion, enjoyment, aesthetics, non-instrumental qualities, expectations, and context, not only task performance.

  • Field evaluation studies real users in natural settings and is especially relevant for situated experiences such as museums.
  • Anticipated UX concerns expected experiences, feelings, needs, and wishes before the full product exists.
  • Prototype materials used in evaluation should help participants imagine the experience while keeping comparison variables consistent.

Examples

  • The final installation used five short sound scenarios with silent breaks, replacing an earlier continuous 15-minute audio file that felt too demanding.
  • Sounds included poetry reading, small talk, singing, piano playing, coughing, chair movement, glasses on a wooden table, and pages turning.
  • Speakers and digital units were hidden in furniture, including a speaker inside the piano and one under the dining table.
  • Copies of handwritten letters, books of poetry, fresh flowers, and fruit were placed on the table to align visual, sonic, and olfactory cues.
  • Visitors described sensing life, human presence, and atmosphere; some initially thought the sounds came from real people in the room.