As the world is embracing systems of connected, smart, and always-on products, designers need to think of how they address these complex interactions beyond purely visual interaction styles. Interaction enriched with sound feedback is promising as a solution, as our hearing is a powerful but rarely used communication channel for interaction. However, sound is often difficult to get started with as it is a practice with high demands. In addition, the tools are complex, programming-oriented, and often not made for design practices. SIDKIT is an accessible, tangible toolkit dedicated to designing interactive sound, specifically targeted at novice designers. The toolkit aims to educate them about how an interactive sound design process might go, by providing a set of tangible interfaces & accessories to prototype & design sonic interactions with. By giving designers a specific, practice-oriented, and plug-and-play toolkit, SIDKIT aims to lower the threshold of learning how to use sound in interaction design.

SIDKIT was inspired by my own 4 years of experience as interactive sound designer during my Master and Bachelor studies. The design process involved research-based scoping of the design space, substantiated by a series of interviews & workshops on the topic. These pointed towards an absence of proper beginner-level tools for sound, and a general lack of tools that enabled prototyping with sound in a designerly manner. The technical development of SIDKIT stood central and was continuously running in parallel to other activities, involving circuit design & assembly, technology prototyping, and signal processing.