A Journey in Product Development – Part 1 : Ideation and Content Mapping January 6, 2021 by Riston Leave a Comment Introducing Spectrafact Intelligent acoustical investigation app for sound identification and visualization. Description Spectrifact harnesses the power of Machine Learning and predictive analytics to isolate and identify prominent environmental sounds. Each sound can then be broken down into their principle waveforms and analyzed for their spectral properties. The user can then choose multiple ways of visualizing the output data. Functions Identification of specific sounds (mostly instruments, but other sound sources as well) Offer approximated waveform/wavelet properties that can be used for reconstruction via synthesis. Acoustic analysis for live sound mixing or basic acoustical investigation during field recording. Build network and repository of shared samples and associated data. Target Audience Professional and Amateur Sound designers. Acoustic and Audio engineers. Musicians and Performers. Hobbyists and Scientists interested in learning more about sound. Since this application would appeal to musicians and a slightly more technical audience, a slightly more sophisticated design is appropriate in this case. A whimsical or more light-hearted design concept would likely be off-putting and not work. The app’s design system should, however, feature interesting and somewhat “techie” design choices. A dark theme would likely be most appropriate since a key feature of the app is visualization. This will be fleshed out further in Part 3 of this series, featuring the clickable prototype built in XD. Process The main functionality of this app can be broken down to three primary user-flows. Firstly, the app is intended to allow users to visualize sound data that is either real-time or recorded. Secondly, the user should be able to record a sample, and then have the system intelligently classify the most likely sounds within the acoustical environment. Thirdly, the user should be able to connect with other app users and share samples via an online repository. Content Map for Sectrafact app user flow.
