Nuts and Bolts: Music as a Design Element

The film and game industrieshave known it forever: Music is a critical part of user experience, creatingatmosphere, supporting memory, and cueing emotion. As a designer of learningexperiences, are you using music as a strategic design element? Here are someideas for adding it to your toolbox.

Influencing mood

Many designers use color instrategic ways: Think about stress management modules built largely withsoothing greens and blues, or safety courses employing warm hues mimicking thecolors of yellow signs, orange traffic cones, and red fire extinguishers. Musiccan similarly “color” a mood: Something slow in a minor key can cue somber content or suggest reflection, while happier, more upbeat music can send amessage about hopefulness or confidence.

Memory

Most Americans of a certain agewill remember the kids’ animated short films for TV, Schoolhouse Rock, with titles like “Conjunction Junction” and “Billon Capitol Hill.” Or maybe you stillneed to sing the melody of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” in your head to rememberwhat letter comes after “R.” Musicis an anchor, helping to fix material in memory, and not just for children:Check out this music-as-mnemonic ideafrom ChinaX and this music video onacute asthma management. Think about your own work: Where might music support alearner remembering steps in a process or definitions of terminology?

Attention

Do you use music playlists? Haveyou ever noticed that after a while they can become mundane, even when they’reserving up songs you love? Thepredictability of it—once you’ve memorized the sequence—creates monotony. Noticethe difference when you reset the playlist to shuffle; see how anticipatinghelps us focus, concentrate, and predict. Most of us have a sense of how music “works,”so that even with unfamiliar pieces we understand shifts and anticipate changes.

Encouraging motion

Have you ever noticed how muchtime we spend talking about moving our learners around? After all, the “next”button was invented about three minutes after eLearning itself was. We want learnersto move from screen to screen, idea to idea, module to module. Or we may wantthem to “move” in the sense of taking action or making a change. Athletes usemusic to support, and increase, basic locomotion. Composers know that a march makes you want to, well, march.Think about where you might use music to help propel a learner forward.

Here’s an example of how musicinfluences a sense of motion. The 2010 version of True Grit is in many ways a retelling, verbatim, of the 1969 film. Thedifference? The musical score. Let’s take a look at what different composersdid with the same scene. Here we have Mattie Ross, bitten by a snake, beingrushed to the doctor by Rooster Cogburn. The scenes are largely identical. Takea look at about 30 seconds of each clip (these links point to different momentsin the same video) from True Grit (2010) and True Grit (1969). How does the music used in each change the sense offorward motion?

Warning: Not just wallpaper

The strategic addition of musiccan help transform a course into an immersive full-body experience. But I wantto be clear: I’m not talking about overlaying some track like musical wallpaperover an entire course. (Just think, for instance, of the soporific effectBeethoven’s Moonlight Sonata—the first link inthis article—would have across 65 screens!) Think about how you can use it tosupport memory, attention, motion, and mood, not just as decoration. And it won’tcompensate for or overcome other design issues. As Articulate’s Tom Kuhlmannonce said: “If the course is boring,adding background audio will only make it boring and danceable.”

Where to get music?

Browsing YouTube’s music library can be a great way to explore moods,genres, and formats like acoustic and electronic (see https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/music).Some image libraries offer music clips, so check to see what you may alreadyhave available to use. Try Googling around for “royalty-free music clips” and “stockmusic,” and check out this post from Judy Katz (formerly Judy Unrein) for advice on acquiring music.

Also check here for a list ofresources from the “Ukulele Learning” sessions offered at DevLearn Conference& Expo. The page includes links to research on music and learning, blogposts from other practitioners, and the playlist we use in the presentation.

Accessibility? Be sure to include descriptivecaptions for those who may have trouble hearing. And per Virginia Disability Services Agencies: “Screen reader users depend on audio descriptions to provide additionalinformation about important visual content displayed within a video. Forinstance, in a chase scene where the only audio is a piece of music, it isessential that audio descriptions are used to describe the actual events, e.g.,‘Two thieves run down a flight of stairs to escape the police.’ It would not bepossible for blind screen reader users to determine this is what is beingdisplayed on the video by listening to the audio alone.”