Collaborative sound design for automotive applications - the sound for electric vehicle as an emblematic use case

Abstract

Within the automotive industry, the Electric Vehicle (EV) represents an incredible challenge and an extensive field of research for sound design developments and applications. In fact, conceiving the external sound of a silent and dynamic object moving in urban or rural environments meets several important constraints: functionality, usability, aesthetics, identity, and of course, sustainability. Then, the multidisciplinary nature of this topic argues for a collaborative approach, in order to co-understand the problem and co-conceive the solutions. But, whereas design has long been developing relevant research works and efficient methods for co-design, sound design still lacks references and tools for co-sound design. In a long-standing collaboration with a French car manufacturer, two recent - and still in-progress - projects have allowed to implement, adapt and test in real life a collaborative sound design framework that was previously developed in a research context, and has since been instantiated in various other applications. This framework - based on a set of tangible intermediary objects and a digital sound lexicon expliciting sound properties - will be presented. Its implementation will be detailed in a comparative approach. Its strengths and weaknesses will be developed in the light of some results obtained within both respective projects.