Your Nest Hubs, speakers and more are now receiving an updated ‘cast’. When you select a device to pour to, you usually hear the following sound. This is Google’s way of giving you an audible confirmation that your device has successfully connected to the speaker or the screen. The old tone just below has a kind of downward turn at the end that gives you a kind of sinking feeling in your mind. It’s probably meant to sound ‘definite’, as if to say ‘yes, I did what you asked – professionalism!’
By comparison, the new one has an upward bend at the end of it with a higher finish. There is no doubt in my mind that the psychology of this sound design is intentional. Google has been striving for a more ‘friendly’ and ‘colorful’ and ‘accessible’ design for years and they have done so much to succeed. I would actually be interested to see one day an outline of this new tone from their sound engineer.
These kinds of updates seem small and unimportant, but for as many times as I hear the decisive tone on my speakers in my house, the new sound seems to make my mood rise a little more. Anything beats the awful, dark pit of a sound Hangouts have always made. I’m just glad we did not have to worry about it anymore.
Google’s long drive to completely redesign the Nest Hub screen, to offer more family-friendly content and to completely redesign it, is probably almost complete if they’re dealing with the sound design now. The Hub has come a long way, but once Google completes something, they change everything again, so I’m sure this is not the last update we’ll see for these devices. Nest has been their golden child for the past few years, and I love it.
Credit: 9to5Google
