Overview

Helio Sound teamed up with the product and digital experience groups at Cinco to create sound design for the Hora Timelight concept. The IOT product uses light, sound and interactivity in simple ways to help manage the rhythm of homelife. Wireless connection and control enables the user to program a full spectrum of light and sound to schedule. Hora’s moveable design allows users to brighten any room. The Timelight was honored with a Notable Design Concept Award from Core 77.

PRODUCT CONCEPT

Hora is made for integration with everyday life. It works with the daily rhythms of individuals and families to help them wake up, fall asleep, relax, have fun and time events. Hora can be used as your alarm clock, night light, and scheduled to let your kids know when they’ve been brushing their teeth for two minutes or when it’s time to come down for dinner. Two distinct “play” modes entertain and delight. The product design and app are intuitive and beautiful, allowing for a seamless incorporation with daily flow.

Sound Design BRIEF AND STRATEGY

The sound design brief called for a "Modern Nature" approach - departing from the disturbing on/off binary of technology and instead opting for an aural experience with more melodic appeal and intricacy than the “beeps and bloops” we’ve come to accept from too many digital products. Just as Hora forgoes the “light on/light off” aesthetic, we created sounds with more interesting rising and falling signatures and note patterns. The approach was more akin to writing short ambient music pieces in the mind frame of Brian Eno’s “Discreet Music” album. To tie everything to nature, we used sounds based off of real instruments (glockenspiels, amglockens, mbira, pan drums, xylophones, chimes, violins, clarinets, flutes, cellos, etc.), digitally altering and treating them with space so they are beyond the point of literal recognition. Sound design for Hora was a conceptual exercise in creating sonic metaphors. We were mindful of the Calm Technology philosophy, the goal being a non-intrusive aural experience.

FUNCTIONS

Hora's main utilitarian functions include an alarm light (Sunrise), timer (Notification), and a night light (Sunset). In addition, there are two entertainment functions: Firefly and Stars. Each function has 5-7 unique sound options that can be chosen by the user via the app and set as the primary sound. Users can program their personal sonic palette. We provided a variety of textures and complexity for each function.

Sound sample lengths were set at 15-30 seconds and designed to loop without abrupt stops for as long as necessary. To test the tolerance of a listener to repetition and make sure that sounds did not become annoying over time, we listened to all of them as extended loops and ensured they created the right headspace. The playback speaker for the Hora is designed to have a greater frequency range and lower harmonic distortion than the typical mobile phone or laptop, but still limited in low and high frequency content with an uneven midrange. We set up a custom EQ profile on our otherwise full-range monitor speakers with rolled off high and low frequency curves to simulate the product speaker range.

In all cases, sound design correlates with light motion. For instance, the softly pulsing sounds of the Sunrise function rise in tandem with the light intensity. The flickering randomness of the Firefly setting is accompanied by more complex moving musical elements.

Have a listen to the variety of different function options below!

Complete Functions Walk Through

Sunrise

The Sunrise function takes the place of the traditional alarm clock. Instead of using the ubiquitous harsh beep sounds we’ve all come to dread, we wanted to “lift” people from sleep in a much more appealing way. We opted for softly pulsing sounds with a noticeable volume ebb and flow. High end content and texture, subtle bell and chime tones, as well as sitar timbres (“Early Meditation”) were blended to add enough high frequency content to rouse one from sleep. We used sounds with generally positive connotations like violins (“Blissful Orchestra”) and flowing water (“Morning Stream”) to make the morning experience as pleasant as possible.

Notification

For Notifications, we utilized synthesized plucks, altered glockenspiels, and tuned cowbells to create sounds with enough transient attack to alert the user without grating on the nerves. Short, rising musical patterns grab attention. Subtle digital delays and reverbs add harmonic and spatial interest, so the sounds don’t come across as the lifeless “alerts” we’ve all come to accept from products.

Sunset

The Sunset function can be used to accompany the user-programmed timed fade of Hora’s night light to lull the user into a restful sleep. Interesting hollow resonances create a sense of a “safe place” (“Sunset Pier” and “Meditating on the Day”). “Twilight Crickets” uses soft high end resonances to evoke the soothing sound of a summer evening, while hushed flutes and clarinet samples were used as the basis for “Pink Sky” and “Evening Drone”. Tonal movement and textural complexity are more restrained throughout, so the loops would disappear as an ambient background through repetition.

Firefly

The Firefly function uses fast random movements and abrupt flashing of the lights to delight the user. A playful complexity for the sound design was the key to interfacing with the dynamic light. We opted for random, percussive bell-like tones with lots of high frequency movement and texture to engage the listener. Irregular patterns, non-resolving melodic, and non-melodic content create the sonic illusion of many things going in different directions, mimicking the random flashes of fireflies.

Stars

The random, slow paced light movement of the Stars function is a more low key iteration of the Firefly function. Whereas Firefly was meant to be awake and playful, Stars is meant to bring to mind the complexity of feelings one may experience when gazing at a diamond sky far from the city. Ambient sounds with plenty of reverb were used to give the listener a sense of space and time to reflect. The goal was to communicate subtleties of emotion: pensiveness, wonder, a contemplation of vastness, solitude, and dream-states.