"Because sound can be both informative and annoying, this raises the difficult design problem of understanding how to enhance its value while minimizing its annoyance." (Norman, 2007)
Sometimes, natural sounds are more annoying than pleasant music. I believe most people prefer to choose pleasant melody rather than kettle whistle as the signal of boiling water.
PS: I would like to answer Chris's question here: what are your thoughts about adding natural sounds to the Multimedia Bell. I would probrably not use natural sounds in our project, because I have a puzzle that what can be called natural sounds in real classrooms. The natural sound of boiling water comes from heated water moving about. What sorts of natural sounds normally take place in classrooms? Sounds created by moving desks and chairs?
"Although quiet can be good, it can also be dangerous." (Norman, 2007)
Sounds inform us what happen in the surroundings. If there are no sounds, we may not notice the upcoming danger. If all the vehivles are designed to keep silent, there must be increases in traffic accident rates. The task for designers is to make it clear that when to use sound or not.
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