Earcon

What Is an Earcon?

An earcon is a brief, abstract, synthesised sound, often a short musical motif, that a computer or device plays to communicate information about an event, action or status to the user. Coined by researcher Meera Blattner and colleagues in 1989, the term is a play on ‘icon’: an earcon is to the ear what an icon is to the eye.

Earcon in Practice

Earcons are the working vocabulary of interface sound: the confirmations, alerts and errors that let a device speak without a screen. Blattner, Sumikawa and Greenberg introduced the term in their 1989 paper on earcons and icons, defining structured families of tones whose rhythm, pitch and timbre carry meaning. Earcons are abstract by design: a rising three-note figure for success, a falling one for failure, learned through use rather than resemblance. Sounds that imitate a real-world event, such as the whoosh Apple Mail plays when a message sends, are strictly auditory icons, a sibling category coined by researcher Bill Gaver. In sonic branding, a well-designed earcon set, built from a brand’s sonic DNA, turns thousands of daily interactions into brand impressions.

Famous Example

The paired rising and falling tone families that signal success and error in device interfaces.