Saturday, January 24, 2015

gui design - Is it recommended to play a sound for warning and error messages?


When you quit an application and it shows you a dialog box asking if you want to save or when you open a file and an error is encountered, some applications play a sound.


By sounds I mean short, but loud/semi-loud attention grabbing sounds, not long musical melodies.


I don't know where this methodology originates in terms of date, but I know a couple of very modern high-end apps that do this.


Is this a recommended practice to play a sound for warning and error messages?




Answer



Playing sounds can be useful when showing error messages, information dialog boxes etc.


However... It is not the responsibility of your application to force the user to hear these sounds. This is something that must be configurable by the user, and since most operating systems already have such a configuration possibility, I see no added value in creating another layer on top of this that is specific to your application.


Example: Windows 7


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