sonos one


























Interaction mapping


1. semester foundations of HID / ident semester project


Overview
This project explored how an inexperienced user interacts with a Sonos One smart speaker. The task was intentionally simple: change the currently playing song.


In practice, the interaction became less obvious. The Sonos One uses a reduced touch surface, where the most important controls are only lightly indicated.


The Play/Pause button was discovered quickly, but the gestures for skipping songs were not immediately understood. The user first tested different tapping actions before discovering that swiping across the surface could change the track.





Context
The project focused on documenting this uncertainty in detail. I observed where the user looked, where they touched, which actions failed, and how their confidence changed when the expected reaction did not happen. These small moments became the core of the mapping.


The final interaction map translated the test into a visual sequence. It showed the physical interface of the speaker, the hidden gesture logic, and the moments where the user either lost orientation or started to understand the system.

These “moments of truth” revealed how much a product depends on feedback, symbolism and learned interaction patterns.








Visual outcomeThe visual process was also part of the project. I reconstructed the Sonos One schematically in Illustrator, tested several layout variants and refined the poster through typography, spacing and hierarchy.

 





The project showed that minimal interfaces are not automatically simple. When controls become almost invisible, users need stronger cues, clearer feedback or more familiar interaction patterns. Interaction mapping helped make this friction visible and turned a small everyday task into a precise study of behaviour, expectation and interface clarity.







The final poster combined observation and visual analysis into one clear documentation of the interaction.






JONAS WIENBERG

PORTFOLIO
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