So far, you've learned about lots of different topics that intersect when we're designing sounds for learning tools, including; how to decide the most important concepts within a tool, what sound parameters we can change, how to evaluate those sounds, how to actually make those sounds and embed them in tools, and how to iterate on our designs. In this module, we're going to put all of these pieces together, and consider how they work to form a cohesive sound design process. Then in the rest of the lessons, we'll cover tips and tricks from our own work with lots of examples. We'll talk about how to layer sounds and visuals for either emphasizing concepts or as a primary presentation method. Then we'll review some more examples while comparing and contrasting the difference between learner controlled changes and non-learner controlled changes for sounds. For this course, we've broken the sound design process into five main steps, but there's lots of sub-steps in between. We might iterate through a couple of steps two or three times during our design process. First, we identify the important concepts, then we brainstorm sound designs. After or even during brainstorming, we prototype those designs. When we've got something ready to go, we can evaluate the designs. Once we've evaluated them, we interpret those results and decide if we should redesign anything. Then we can repeat any of the previous steps until we're satisfied with our sound designs. If we felt that we weren't highlighting the right concepts, we could start back at the beginning, or we could start back at the brainstorming step if we're happy with the concepts but weren't happy with actual sounds. If it was a simple redesign or we were narrowing our design choices from a larger set, we might jump straight into the prototyping of the new versions. Let's check out each step with a bit more detail. The first step is to identify the important concepts. In Module 2, we discussed how it was important to start from the concept. What's the most important idea or piece of information that we're trying to convey? What makes up that high-level idea? Is it a relationship? Are we trying to show the amount or convey a material? To review this, checkout Module 2. The next step is to brainstorm possible sound designs. At this point, you'll be asking yourself questions like, what kind of mappings do you want to use? What makes sense, and how many sounds or sound layers should be included? We also covered this in Module 2, in lessons 2 through 7. At this stage, after identifying the concepts and deciding on some mappings, you should be considering how you want to get or create your sounds, and how you might embed them into your learning tools. In Module 4, we examined lots of different resources and ways to record sounds, get sound clips, or create your own sounds through programming languages or synthesizers. We reviewed the design and implementation process that PhET follows as an example for a process that you might use. We covered different tools to prototype sounds like Reaper or Ableton Live, how to integrate those into early prototypes like videos, how to integrate them into late prototypes like our HTML5 and Web audio simulations, and how to update those designs. After creating your sound into prototypes, you should want to know if those sound designs make sense to your users. We covered the three types of questions we often ask: comprehension and interpretation, usability, and user experience. You should decide who you want to evaluate your sounds with and what questions and methods will best support what you want to learn. Check out Module 3 to review this. After completing your evaluation, you'll want to know how well those designs worked. What could your users understand? What couldn't they understand? What changes should you make? This is where you'll decide what you need to iterate on and what steps you want to start out for the next stage of your design process. We talked about interpreting our evaluations at the end of Module 3. These are the five steps that we recommend you do each time you do a sound design. It comes directly from our design and implementation process, though the amount of time you spend on each could differ project to project. So let's review. How did your sound design process go? If your first designs didn't work out, try a larger round of brainstorming or try to find some other inspirations for your designs. If your pool of ideas is larger, then you have more to choose from when you're getting feedback. If it did work out the first time, great. Now you can work on refining those designs.
