Episode 19: DON'T BE ALARMED! - Dr. Elif Özcan (Vieira) - TU Delft & Critical Alarms Lab Artwork

The Quiet Mark Podcast

Welcome to The Quiet Mark Podcast. Hosted by Simon Gosling CMO at Quiet Mark, the global award programme associated with the UK Noise Abatement Society, this series uniquely explores the vital role acoustics will play in the future of global living, building and product design sharing conversations with thought-leading designers, architects, and sound experts. The World Health Organization (WHO) recognises environmental noise as the 2nd largest environmental health risk in Western Europe after air quality. Noise contributes to a range of physical and mental health problems, disturbed sleep, affects people’s hearing, communication and learning. And, in our smart-phone era, noise isn’t only about the big sounds of planes, traffic and construction sites, smaller sounds like someone FaceTiming on the bus or playing music loudly through their tinny headphones can cause stress, annoyance and impacts our mental health. During this time of Lockdown our world is much quieter than usual, every sound is more noticeable, quietness has never seemed more important or front of mind, where could this take us and how will we live, build, and work after this profound period of change? To help navigate the world-changes around us, these exclusive insights into pioneering projects and visions, explore the future on the other side of the crisis.

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The Quiet Mark Podcast

Episode 19: DON'T BE ALARMED! - Dr. Elif Özcan (Vieira) - TU Delft & Critical Alarms Lab

March 22, 2021 • Quiet Mark • Episode 19

Our guest on this episode is Dr. Elif Ozcan Vieira - Associate Professor in Sound-driven Design and Research at the TU Delft Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. She's currently working mainly in the fields of space operations, and healthcare - both of which she discusses with our host, Simon Gosling, on the show.

Top education and research are central to TU Delft, the oldest and largest technical university in the Netherlands. Their 8 faculties offer 16 bachelor's and more than 30 master's degree programs. Their more than 25,000 students and 6,000 employees share a fascination with science, design and technology. Their shared mission: impact for a better society. (Something that resonates very well with us here at Quiet Mark!)

Elif is the director of the Critical Alarms Lab (CAL), which is a new initiative of the TU Delft Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. CAL aims to shape the future of product-user interactions in complex environments through audible, visual, and haptic information design. The lab is a flexible consortium of individuals, institutes, and companies, and it offers multiple opportunities for student participation.

In fact, it's that healthcare connection that brought us together because Elif was kindly introduced to us by a previous guest on our podcast, Yoko Sen, an ambient musician who's applying talents and skills to transforming the sounds of alarms in hospitals, to make them less stressful, more natural-sounding environments. This is something with which she collaborates with Elif and you'll hear Elif's own experiences of their pioneering partnership in this episode.

As an Associate Professor at the TU Delft Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Elif teaches and does research on `form and experience-driven and `sound-driven' design. Her academic career started at the TU Delft as well, with doing a Ph.D. study on product sounds (`Product sounds: Fundamentals and application'). With this study, she is the first to establish a comprehensive theory about product sounds based on empirical evidence.

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Simon Gosling

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