Exploring The Making of "YHAAI"

We took a tast to create YHAAI . This one started as a simple question:

How do we show that every organisation — every brand — has an audio identity?

We wanted it clear, playful, and experiential. Not a lecture. Not a case study. Just a tool that shows how audio lives across touch points.

Hover to reveal: first experiment

The initial idea was simple:

• Hover over the tool → all touch points of the organisation appear visually.

• Click a touch point → text explains how that point uses audio.

But the hover alone felt empty.
We tried adding audio that layered multiple sounds together, some sequential, some overlapping.

The goal:

• Make it feel like a living network of sound

• Let people get it intuitively: if the sounds aren’t connected, it’s chaos; if they are, it feels like “oh yeah — this is where I normally hear audio.”

At first, the sounds played continuously while expanding.
It was… loud. Annoying. Distracting.

So we tried:

• Only play audio while expanding, then fade out in 2–3 seconds.

• It gave a clear first impression and stopped being annoying.

The challenge was creatively designing having all these touchpoints play together on the expansion without disturbing the user , showing they can be disturbing when they are disconnected but without having the user switch off….That took some time in studio…

Proximity control: next evolution

But we realized fading out completely killed the experience.
The insight: people need to feel audio at touch points over time, not just once.

So we explored a proximity control system:

• After the initial expansion, the audio is filtered and lowered.

• As the user moves the mouse toward a touch point, the audio for that point becomes louder and clearer, while other touch points remain subtly present.

• It’s like an acoustic spotlight — the user controls the focus, but the network remains alive.

This way, the experience:

• Demonstrates the brand’s audio identity in a multi-dimensional way

• Lets people explore without overwhelming them

• Highlights both the interaction design and the sound design choices — layering, filtering, and spatial audio

Sound design decisions

• Layering: multiple touch points play together but with different intensity and timing to suggest relationships.

• Filtering: low-pass/high-pass and volume adjustments help focus attention without cutting off context.

• Fade timing: initial expansion is 2–3 seconds; then sound gently recedes to create a dynamic canvas.

• Proximity mapping: mouse position controls relative volume, giving the user tactile control of the audio landscape.

Every tweak was a balance: clarity vs. playfulness, surprise vs. fatigue.

WHATS NEXT?

• Exploring if we can implement an AI reading tool that can read the text instead of the long read.