Down audio rabbit holes 🕳️

And how to creatively embed audio in learning experience design.

Sep 20, 2024

I was scrolling through my phone and found these short videos I took at Floriade 2022. 👇

There’s something playful, surprising, and energizing about making sounds while interacting with objects. There is no script to follow and no clear expectations of the result. Letting go and immersing yourself tickles all the creative senses and brings joy.

This sent me on a discovery journey, and it turns out sounds are so fascinating that a whole artistic category is dedicated to it. It’s called Sound Art = Art which uses sound both as its medium (what it is made out of) and as its subject (what it is about).

Sound is ubiquitous, unstoppable, immersive, the agency through which spoken language is understood and music is absorbed. […] Common sense and the prevailing view both insist that the world is a large space occupied by objects, all possessing varying degrees of value, magnitude and mobility, whereas sound is imprecise and ambiguous.
—David Toop, The art of noise

If curiosity also pulls you in, Oskar Lindskog compiled 10 Sound Installations that Inspire and Create Connection for you to explore.

Then I remembered. The magic of sound spreads beyond art already.

I stumbled across Blackout two years ago by accident. As the power grid goes down across the US, we’re following a small-town radio DJ named Simon Itani (starred by Rami Malek), fighting to protect his family and community as civilization as we know it comes to an end.

It was weird at first, but I was later blown away by the plot, the characters, the sound effects, and how immersive everything was. As it turns out, there’s a whole world of so-called fiction podcasts out there. It’s like a series, but audio.

Then, two weeks ago, I found Everything is Alive, and I was hooked!
It’s an interview show hosted by Ian Chillag and produced by Jennifer Mills. All the subjects are inanimate objects. In each episode, a different thing tells its life story, and everything it says is true. You can listen to Dennis, the Pillow, or hear from Shanon, the Bath Towel. 😅

I was increasingly intrigued by this medium and how others use it so creatively.

Unsurprisingly, I found myself thinking, “How could we use audio to elevate learning experience design?”

A rabbit hole opened right under my feet. Swoosh. Gone! LOL

Let’s see how deep it goes. 🕵️‍♀️

The usual suspect: Podcasts

Sitting around the fire and telling stories is as old as time, making learning from speech and storytelling an inherent human skill.

With their informal, conversational tone, podcasts can feel more personal and engaging. If done well, they enhance the learning experience by making listeners feel like they are attending an intimate gathering with interesting people or witnessing a conversation between a familiar talk show host and a renowned expert in the field.

The format allows for exploring complex ideas through dialogue, offering a more nuanced understanding.

The exploratory, dialogical nature of many podcasts enhances subjects that require deep reflection:
—Ethics
—Leadership
—Communication
—Emotional intelligence
—Mental health and wellness
—Diversity, equity and inclusion

Whether by intent or as a consequence of the conversational format, podcasts excel in conveying knowledge through storytelling. Case studies, biographies, or conversations with practitioners in a specific field provide valuable insights, real-world experiences, and diverse perspectives that are not easily conveyed through text.

A fantastic example of podcasting done right is the Amazing If “Skills Sprint” campaign: A yearly series of 20 mini-podcast episodes (only about 7 minutes each), to help you navigate your career with clarity, confidence, and control. It covered skills like problem-solving, influencing, presence, focus, empathy, learning agilkity and much more.
Each episode comes with a podsheet covering the takeaways and further resources, as well as a transcript. You can catch up with all of them here.
Of download one right here 👇
Day 14—Learning Agility
441KB ∙ PDF file
Download
Learning agility helps you to succeed in situations you’ve not experienced before.
Download

A long list of advantages:

—Multitasking
Allow us to fit learning bites into a busy schedule, while engaging in tasks where reading or watching is impractical, such as driving, exercising, cleaning, or cooking.

—Accessibility and flexibility
A wonderful alternative for individuals with visual impairments or reading difficulties. Plus, most podcast platforms allow listeners to adjust playback speed, tailoring the learning experience to personal preferences.

—Focus on tone and emotion
Podcasts can convey tone, emotion, and nuance more effectively than text. The speaker's voice can add context and engagement through inflection and emphasis, making complex topics easier to grasp, and often, more memorable.

Sound is materially invisible but very visceral and emotive. It can define a space at the same time as it triggers a memory.
—Susan Philipsz, Immersive Environments Artist

—Less screen fatigue
Audio formats offer a break from visual inputs while still facilitating learning. They combine perfectly with a walk outdoors so that you can leave the desk behind for a while.

One big shortcoming

Almost exclusively, podcasts are enjoyed on our devices with a single set of earphones. By design, they create an individualized, private listening experience, leading to a one-way flow of information.

In such contexts, learning usually remains passive, as opposed to active, constructivist learning experiences that lead to deeper understanding. In other words, it remains a “teacher”-centered, not a “student”-centered, educational approach.

That’s the creative challenge I’ve set for myself in this letter.

How might we invite conversations and collaborative interactions around audio formats? How else might we embed audio in social learning experience design? How might we encourage participnats to use their voice to share and reflect?

Five ways to play with audio in learning experience design

#1
Embed a museum field trip into your workshop

A field trip invites participants outdoors. We leave our desks, to-do’s, calendars, and meetings behind, making them the perfect design playground for auditory experiences.

Host part of your workshop in a museum (modern art or science museums work best for this purpose). Participants can explore alone or in pairs.

Based on the workshop topic, send them off with three tasks.

For example, they might need to find something related to the session topic, something that sparks a solution idea, something that challenges them, something they don’t understand, and so on.

The key is to capture their findings in a different format for each task:
—Take a photo
—Sketch in a notebook
—Record their reflection with a voice memo app (ask them to download ‘Whisper Memos’ on iOS and ‘Record You’ on Android)

While you can use the photos and sketches to debrief and link to the second part of the workshop, you will ask them to email you their audio reflections.
You will stitch them together and send them over with one single reflection question one week after the workshop.

This allows them to remember the visit to the museum, mentally return to the workshop, revisit their notes and takeaways, and gain new layers of insight by listening to the voice field notes of all the other participants.

In experience design, this is known as the “extension”—a physical or digital artifact participants take away to remember the experience.

#2 Add a “compliments booth” to a big event

Imagine the energy and buzz around a big event or conference.
What if you could take a moment alone, in a little cozy booth with a simple voice-recording device, and record a compliment for a speaker, thank a colleague for an insightful conversation, reflect on your biggest takeaway, or leave a personal note to anyone you’re working with to thank and appreciate them?

Now imagine these short, diverse, delightful messages compiled in a podcast shared one month after the event to bring everyone back to relive the connections made and key moments lived.

Suitable for offsites, company-wide conferences, big campaign launches, leadership program launches, and other big gatherings.

#3
Host a guided audio walk

A guided audio walk is an outdoor audio experience in which participants follow auditory prompts that guide their immersion into a specific space, inviting them to observe their surroundings in full awareness.

Host it live:
You can design an audio walk yourself, with specific invitations and reflections, and host it live while everyone joins the experience on Zoom from their phones, cameras off, and phones in their pockets. Alternatively, you can use apps like The Walks or ECHOES and then gather everyone for a fishbowl-style debrief to make sense of what happened.

Host it async:
Share the audio walk in advance and invite participants to complete it over a specific period (two weeks). After they complete the sound walk, ask them to answer a set of reflection questions using a collective whiteboard (like Miro/ MURAL) or a Padlet board.

This can be a standalone experience or as part of a more extensive program or campaign.

Flowers I found one morning in the park during a mindful walk
✨ Immerse yourself ✨
I am so deeply grateful to my uber-creative friend, Lily Higgins, who gifted us all a sample of her signature audio-walk experience The Serendipity Walk, so that we can immerse ourselves into a guided audio walk.
This Serendipity Walk is about reimagining your work through the metaphor of a game and reflecting on the things you might want to play with and re-design.
The password is (very fittingly) experiencenerds
Get your headphones and go out🚶‍♀️

#4
Prolong the impact of a single workshop with podcasts

How often have you been asked to host one workshop on [super important topic], and you had to hold back tears? Podcasts are a great way to prolong a single workshop's “life” and impact.

After the workshop, release a short series of 3-5 conversations with practitioners who share their reflections on the challenges and joys of their practice that relate to the workshop topic.

If you hosted a workshop on innovation, record conversations with innovation practitioners.
Leadership?—Invite leaders to discuss a specific challenge, how they navigated it, and the lessons they learned.
Creativity?—Creative thinkers from all areas.
You get the idea.

Learning from other people’s practice stories helps with sense-making, empathy, reflection on practice, and professional identity formation.

You can close each podcast with one question that invites listeners to reflect on their own practice and ask them to share their thoughts in a collective Miro/ MURAL/ Padlet/ Slack/ Teams.

#5
Ask them to keep an audio journal

Perfect for longer programs, like leadership or onboarding, embed reflection moments throughout the experience. Ask participants to record their answers using a note-taking app, then upload them all in a folder. [If one of the program's goals is to enhance public speaking skills, you can replace voice reflection with video reflection and use Storytagger to capture them].

At the end of the program, pair participants and ask them to share access to their audio reflection folder.

They have two weeks to review the other person's reflections and take notes each time they gain new insight.

Lastly, they meet for a 30-minute sharing session to discuss any ideas and insights they had while listening to the other person’s audio log.

The practicalities of podcasting

A simple Google search will find you thousands of “how-to” guides if you are looking to start an internal podcast to foster learning, culture, or connection within your organisation.

Keep it short:
Break the content into 15-30-minute episodes, each focusing on a key concept, case study, or actionable insight. This allows listeners to digest information without feeling overwhelmed.

Elevate it with companion resources:
Offer transcriptions, one-pagers, infographics, checklists, reflection prompts, or downloadable summaries that listeners can reference. This allows them to revisit and solidify key concepts they might have missed while multitasking.

Add variation:
Mix solo-hosted episodes with interviews, panel discussions, case studies, or even scenario-based learning where listeners must think through a situation before the solution is revealed.

Recap often:
When listeners multitask, their attention fluctuates, causing them to miss important points. Make sure you embed recap pitstops into the conversation to go back to the takeaways. You can also start and end the episode with a summary of the main concepts to emphasize the lessons learned multiple times.

Embed reflection:
Add prompts throughout the podcast asking listeners to reflect, pause, or think about how the content applies to their work. For example: "Pause for a moment and consider how you would apply this technique in your next meeting." You can encourage them to take short, actionable notes or mentally answer questions reinforcing the content.

Other auditory rabbit holes 🕳️

—The Listening Tide is a podcast hosted by Huib Haye that invites a single guest to bring a handful of audio contributions that they feel passionate about to share with an audience. They listen to these together and use them as a tool to engage in a conversation about our surroundings, positions, perceptions, histories and (alternate) futures. These can be fragments from speeches, music tracks, letters, books, poetry, and field-recordings. The aim is to dive-deep and float, and really listen to what we're hearing.

—myNoise offers various sound generators, such as rain, white noise, or cityscapes, to help you focus, relax, or sleep.

—The Sound of Love is a project by Chia Amisola, in which she compiles comments she finds under love songs on YouTube. Intimacy is often found in unexpected places: it’s human nature.

—Radio Garden—listen to live radio stations from around the world by simply rotating a virtual globe.

—Take a six-minute virtual forest bathing walk.

—Soundwalk’s Collective sensory experience for NLS Radio.

If you’d like to spice up your experiences🧂

I love to co-design memorable experiences, and I am offering 1:1 ideation sessions during which we can elevate an existing (learning) experience you are working on or brainstorm one from scratch. Check it out here, and maybe we’ll create something creative and unexpected together.

I cannot talk about podcasts without spotlighting a soul project: Mapping Ties—Where community builders share their stories of crafting, nurturing, and growing communities from within. I am co-hosting this with Sophie August, and if you are building internal communities, you’ll love it!

Have a fun weekend, and until next time—stay curious out there! 🔍
Anamaria