Chime
2025
Interaction Design
Sound Design
Chime is a set of near-future artifacts that turn moments in nature into something you can hear, record, and keep.
Duration: 3 weeks
Awards: Student Runner-Up in Speculative Design, Core77
Team:
Sharvin Sawant
Sander Randoja
Henning Birgersson
Samuel Nagel
Connecting to Nature through Data Sonification
By touching soil, water, plants, and fungi with sensor-equipped fingers, environmental data is sensed and translated into sound through a recording device. The resulting sound can be recorded onto a disc, preserving a tangible memory of the interaction with nature.
1. Wander
Wander into nature with your device
2. Sense
Listen to the data of your surroundings
3. Collect
Preserve the moments that resonate
with you on the memory disc
4. Reminisce
Revisit your past journeys through
their captured soundscapes
The Collector
The Collector is a handheld recording device that converts extracted data into live sound.
The Sensors
Sensors worn on your fingers capture data such as pH, bioelectrical signals, and moisture levels from whatever natural element you touch.
The Composer
Later at home, you can relive their journey through the Composer, a playback device that weaves the collected sounds into an ambient soundscape.
Memory
Thoughtful collection that reflects your personal journey through nature.
Chime Interface
Data-to-Sound Translation
The sounds do not indicate whether conditions are good or bad. Instead, users interpret patterns themselves. Healthy plants produce stronger sounds than wilting ones due to higher bioelectrical activity.
Reflections
Three weeks is a tight window, and what got us through was how well the group clicked. I came in with a visual design background, so I contributed most to the UI and to shaping the concept, while the physical product side, form and CMF, was new to me.
None of us had a musical background, so we learned Vital and Ableton from scratch. What surprised me was how much you can shape with so little. Sound had been absent from how I designed before, and seeing what it could carry changed that.
What I didn't expect was that a sound project would become about far more than sound. Using Chime meant going into the forest, and the experience extended well beyond hearing. It brought to mind Kenya Hara's idea that the senses are not separate but interrelated, where designing for one inevitably engages the others. Although we focused on sound, experiencing the product in its environment was as much visual and tactile, shaped by the atmosphere and even the smell of the forest.
The harder question was whether the premise held up at all. Technology in nature can deepen our connection to it or quietly replace it. We chose to sit with that contradiction rather than resolve it, and framed the project speculatively as a result.
Working on the mobile view,
please have a look on desktop