What Was That Noise: Mastering Creative UI Sound Design with Intention

[music] Hello everybody. Welcome to what was that noise? Creative UI sound design with intention. If I could just remind everybody to put their phones on silent. Um and also there's a survey that you can fill out as well to give feedback on this talk. So for those of you that don't know me, my name is Johnny. I'm a sound designer from London and I work with the awesome team at Forosa Interactive UK. I joined the team when they were known as Noise Works and I was their third full-time employee and now we have over 15 people just in the UK. It's even more than that if we include our amazing um American team as well. So, I've been in the games industry for about 5 years and I've been very lucky to have worked on quite a few different titles in that time. Um, some highlights being Grounded from Obsidian, Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League from Rock Steady, and then Warhammer 3 from Creative Assembly. And we're going

to be looking at some of my UI work from Warhammer a little bit later in the session. I also have a master's degree from the University of Westminster in interactive media, which is where I first learned about a few concepts that I'll be discussing here in this talk. So, Warhammer 3 is actually the first time that I'd ever designed UI audio, and I learned so much about not just making UI, um, but also sound design itself in general. So, I thought I knew what I was going to be in for when I was told I was going to be making UI sound design. So, I thought maybe making a few clicks, maybe [snorts] some impacts of a few bushes. Um, but it turned out to be a lot more than that. So, I was really lucky to have an amazing supervisor on this project. uh called Valentine and after one conversation with him, he basically totally changed the way that I thought about designing UI. So, as I said, I thought I'd be basically making beeps and boops. Um but he uh Valentin uh described UI as being

this um amazing sound design challenge um where you can get really creative and abstract with what you're with what you're making. And it kind of just like totally blew my mind because I thought I was going to be really uh constrained within a box about with what I was going to be making. But then suddenly the floodgates had opened and I could pretty much design anything I wanted to as long as it fit within the theme of what I was trying to design for. So I wanted to share what I learned while designing UI and Warhammer. And then also I wanted to share some stuff that I learned while I was studying my master's degree as I think together it can be really great for making UI audio. So I've split this talk up into three different areas. So UX design principles. I'll just give a very brief introduction to the huge world of UX design and how we can use some UX principles uh in our UI audio design. Then design with intention. We'll just look at very quickly three questions we can use to help start off a

little design brief for ourselves. And then finally, we have adding character where we will look at places we can grab inspiration for audio material that will help elevate our designs and give them more of a creative flare. So, at the end of this session, I'm hoping to leave you all with a set of tools to use when creating UI audio that will help uh serve the player and aid in the overall audio experience. But very quickly, why does UI audio even matter? So, after working on Warhammer, I thought a lot about how much of an impact UI actually makes in the relatively small space that it occupies, especially when you have a UI linked to gameplay mechanics. So, I think I have a kind of cool example of just how important UI can actually be. Um, so I didn't work in this game, but it's been highly influential on me and I imagine a lot of people in this room as well. It was probably the first game that showed me the real cinematic storytelling potential of UI in um, sorry, of sound

design and storytelling in video games. And it happens to feature one of the most iconic UI sounds that there is. And I'm sure some people already know what it's going to be. The alert sound from Met Gear Solid. So, it's so iconic. I think even lo tons of people outside of games have probably heard it at this point as it's all over social media.
What was that noise? [groaning and screaming] So, I think this clip shows you how much of an impact UI audio can have. Players don't even need to see the little red exclamation mark above the soldier's head to know that we're in trouble. We the the sound provides us all the information that we need. So, now we know we have to fight or hide in a cardboard box or get caught by soldiers.

Um, so great UI means that the player doesn't always need to rely on visual cues. They don't need to stop and think about what a certain UI sound means. So it's almost like teaching somebody a new language and this just helps people become fully immersed within the game's world. So with UI audio, we as developers get a way to communicate using only sound. But this isn't all uh we get to tell a story with UI. So, your upgrade sounds can get more powerful the stronger the player gets. Location pop-ups can give hints at what sort of environment somebody is heading into. We also get an opportunity to be experimental. UI audio doesn't need to be static. You can mess with the player in cool and unique ways, such as making the UI glitch out if something crazy is happening in the environment. There is endless opportunities to weave what's happening narratively into your UI. Then finally, the great thing about UI is it can not only help communicate that

important information, it can also aid people who may um have accessibility needs, uh such as people who rely on audio for all of their gameplay cues. So, as I mentioned after Warhammer, I was thinking about UI a fair bit and I realized that what I learned while studying at university might actually be really helpful for somebody who wants to design UI audio. So, just a little background on this. Uh, when I was trying to get into sound design, I found myself doing a master's degree that was supposed to be about sound for video games, but for some reason it turned out to be about designing apps and websites. And I don't really know what happened there. Um, however, the one thing I did enjoy learning about on that course was UX design. And I actually almost considered it as a career at one point. So, I thought I'd take this opportunity to actually use my degree for something and introduce you to UX design for those of

you who are not familiar with it because I think it could be really helpful for those of us who want to design UI sounds. So, UX stands for user experience and it is often tied to UI when it comes to software. It's the overall experience somebody has with a product. In our case, it's video games, but UX I think can be applied to pretty much anything. Um, so you're talking software, phones, shopping malls, the way you put together IKEA furniture, Disneyland. The way you get around and interact is all user experience and it's all been carefully designed. So using UX is how we can create an easy to use and effective product or experience. It helps us solve pain points in design and allows us to create something that everybody can understand. So, I think this is useful for audio because it can be used as a sort of checklist to help us create sounds that we know clearly communicate to the player. And UX could also be a great tool to use if you ever want to make soundbased puzzles. So, I've chosen just

a few UX principles to have a quick look at. The first one of these being the isolation effect. So when creating a set of UI sounds, you just want to make sure that your important information or key actions are distinctive. So for example, you could have a lockpicking mechanic where the player has to open a lock on a door using only sound. So you just want to make sure that one of your mechanical clicks is distinctive. So it would sound something like this. There you go. [laughter] [applause] Okay, let's try that again. Um, so the isolation effect, right, let me just figure out where I was. So, you could have a lock making mechanic where you want the players to open the lock on a door using only sound. So, you'd want to make sure that one of your mechanical clicks is distinctive, which

would sound something like this. So, all of these sounds feel like they're part of the same mechanism, but the one that stands out is the thing that's providing the key information to the player. This is probably an example of quite an easy puzzle. Um, so you could make the distinct click uh more subtle depending on how difficult you actually want to make the puzzle. Then we have cognitive load. When there's too much information going on at the same time, we can sometimes struggle mentally to keep up. So the way to use this would be to organize content into smaller distinct groups. So this helps uh users to understand memorize things easily and also try not to introduce too many new groups or maybe new audio features at the same time. One way of organizing your groups effectively is by using a pallet of

sounds chosen specifically for that group. And this helps to ensure that you've created an easily identifiable audio language for this set of sounds. So for this example, you could have a set of potions that you can use, a small, medium, and large potion. Keeping similar sound characteristics across the sets will help players understand what they're using with only the UI sound. And then selective attention. People often filter out information that isn't relevant. And this is so we can focus on information that is important or relevant to the task at hand. So the way to use this is just to make sure that your audio is guiding players attention to information and in actions um important information in action sorry and this is either in the mix or with your asset design. So if you are doing this in the mix you just want to duck

your other less important sounds to make your UI stand out. So as we saw the Metal Gear clip they do this really really well. Okam's Razer. This is probably the law that most people know. Prioritizing the simplest and most straightforward solution when designing. Trying to make everything as simple and straightforward as possible can help you avoid a few design traps, such as spending too much time on a design or overdesigning uh sound for what's trying to convey to the player. I've definitely fallen into the trap of really getting into the weeds when trying to design something. And then after taking a step back and just focusing on what I was actually trying to make, um, in the end, the simplest solution got me the best results. And then we have flow, which is our last principle, arguably like the final boss of UX. Um, essentially flow is all about achieving player immersion. And you

design for flow by providing the player with feedback to clearly signal to them what action has been done and what has been accomplished. And you also just want to remove any unnecessary friction in your designs to avoid disengagement. So if you're going to be designing UI, you can use UX to help give you a few ideas of what sort of sound to make and also help ensure that your sounds are communicating effectively to the player. To make this a little bit easier to remember, I've kind of distilled everything down to a few prompts you can use to make sure that your designs are hitting the purpose of each principle. So, you have the isolation effect. How can I make my important audio sonically distinct? Cognitive load. Is the sound easily identifiable? Selective attention. Does it stand out and guide the player's attention when it needs to? Okam's razor, is it overdesigned or am I over complicating this? and then flow. Is there anything in my design that creates any unnecessary friction?

When I first get a task for designing any sound, I always find it really useful just to make a little brief for myself before um along with any creative direction that I get. This can either be like a mind map or just a few notes um just to give me something to aim for and kind of plan a few sound design ideas I want to incorporate into the actual design. So I usually start by putting this together by just asking myself something like these three questions and I've chosen these specifically for UI. So how big or complex does the sound need to be? This will give you some information about audio characteristics. I would consider putting your UI sounds into a sort of UI audio hierarchy. Um, so let's just take the example of like a simple menu screen. Your hierarchy would be a se navigation select and then confirm. So navigation would be your smallest, lightest sound.

Select would be a little bit bigger with maybe a few more layers in there. And then confirm would be even bigger than that because it's going to be the most important action you're taking on that screen. So thinking about this before you've even started designing your sounds helps to ensure that you don't go too big and complex straight away. And this can also help you prioritize where you want to spend most the most of your time designing as you probably want to spend more time designing your confirm sound than you do your smaller navigation sound. Then we have does the sound have minor or larger implications on gameplay? So how much of an impact on gameplay does the UI in question have? A settings menu could be low impact. An upgrade screen could be medium impact. And then a game mechanic could be high impact. If the audio has a large impact on gameplay,

something like a UI signal for a parry move in a combat heavy game, this is probably going to need a lot of attention. You want it to sound cool, satisfying, and not repetitive for the player. This also want means you want to ensure that the sound has support in the mix so it stands out and is unmissable. Um, so the second the player hears it, they know exactly what's just happened and what they did. So this sort of links back to the UX principles like selective attention and cognitive load. And then finally for this we have is it positive, negative or neutral. So it might be obvious but if I'm making a UI sound and I decide what sort of effect it is, I immediately know what sort of audio source I want to try and find to make sure I'm communicating that effect to the player. So if it's positive, very generally speaking, having some sort of rising or ascending pitches, lighter elements like glassy sparkles, major scale inclusion, if your UI is musical, this will help to convey that you're intending your UI to be a positive

effect. Then if it's negative, um, having some sort of descending pitches, more low frequency content, minor scale inclusion can help convey that your intended effect is a negative one. And then if it's neutral, just trying to stay somewhere in the middle. Maybe avoid tonal elements that either descend or ascend too much. So just with these questions, you already know um how complex to make the sound, how important the sound is in the game, and whether it's a positive, negative, or neutral effect. So you've already got some great information you can use to help give your design a starting point. And then from there, you can start looking at what sort of other things you want to incorporate into your design to make it sound more interesting. Which leads me to the fun stuff, adding character.

So, in order to add character to the sound, I've come up with a few avenues you can explore um when looking for inspiration to help elevate the overall quality of the audio. So, using this, I'm hoping it's going to help inspire you to create UI audio beyond your default beeps and boops. So, the first avenue we can look at is in-game technology. So, where is your game set? What sort of technology do they have access to? Is it more tactile and mechanical? Is it based on magic? Is it a futuristic setting? If it's futuristic, is it like um like an 80s style analog realm like Alien Romulus or Bladeunner? Or is it more clean and digital focused like Star Trek? Explore how you can represent this technology in your sounds. So, for example, if you have a like a sci-fi game and a weapon upgrade skill tree, as your player and weapons get more powerful, you can have something that sounds like this.

Then materials. So looking at what sort of materials are used in your game. Is there a common theme throughout like the crystals in Final Fantasy for example? Then also paying attention to what the actual UI or uh UI screen looks like it's made out of. So does it look like rock? Is it a book? Um, is it a purely digital interface? So, if your Too soon. If your answer to this is metal, you can do something like this. If it's a magical book, you can have like a navigation sound that sounds like this. And then if it's a is a magic crystal, you can have something that sounds like this.

Then environmental biome. This is one of my favorite ones. So this is a great one to consider for UI that tells you the location name of a new area that you're uh going into. Um so I've just made a little redesign to illustrate this. And this is just using a still from one of my favorite games when I was a kid. And it's got some very rough graphic design fading in um to represent the the location banner UI. So just to set the the scene a little bit. Could be entering a area of the game that's like dark and stormy and you know could be hit by lightning at any time. So you could just do a cool sounding bush. That would kind of cover all of these things. But if you have time, absolutely consider adding in elements that represent the biome itself. So if it's like a snowy environment, you can add in things like ice and arctic winds.

If it's a jungle environment, you can add in like tree rustles and birds that are actually found in that area. You can even add in things like uh creature sounds that the player might actually encounter. And then we have tonality and texture. So tonality could be in the form of voice and this could be things like um like whispers, singing, gregorian chants, etc. Musical elements, some musical phrases or notes, weird instruments like water phones or bows, bow instruments. Um, there's obviously a lot of things you can play with for this because there's essentially an infinite amount of musical instruments in the world. Um, and then tonal metal or synth screeatures. Really cool for creating an uneasy feel and making something sound otherworldly or scary. So, very good for horror games. Um, then you have texture. So, this is things like interesting wishes, filtered cloth, um, which has been pitched down and and time stretched. This is one of my favorite

things to to use as it can work really well. as like a low frequency sweetener to add some like interest and movement to your sound. So, this is just a very quick example of a filtered cloth kind of thing. So, this is before I've done any processing to the sound. And then this is the same source file, but it's just been pitch down, time stretched. Uh, a little bit of saturation, nothing too crazy. So there's still plenty of room to push the sound, but really great for a like low frequency sweetener. Fire is also fantastic to use. I found this really useful for magic UI, for example. And then rock is really

versatile and it's a great thing to add some interesting textures to either your impacts or your tails. Then we have cinematic elements. So impacts with like massive transients to make the sound really punchy and using saturation to really blow your sound up and make it over the top and cinematic. This is probably my most used technique when I design anything at the moment. Um, it might sound a bit over the top, but I actually use three different saturation and distortion plugins at the moment. So, I've been using inflator to give the sound just a bit more body and volume overall. And then I use uber loud to just dial in how much saturation I want for the lows, mids, and highs. And then the latest addition to this is kilohertz distortion. So, in Reaper, you can modulate any parameter in a plugin. So I modulate the drive of this plugin based on the incoming signal. So at the peak of the sound is when you have the most drive being applied.

And this can just really help with your dynamics and just give everything a little bit more oomph. So this is before the kilohz distortion has been added. And then this is after. And then this is before and then after. So kind of just adds more punchiness to everything. It's great. Another great technique I picked up recently is adding distortion to specific frequencies. So if I want to add more high frequency content to my sound, I will duplicate it, highpass it, pitch it up an octave, add distortion, and then mix that back into my sound. You can also do this for adding more low frequency content to your sound as well. Um, but instead you lowass it and pitch it down. So this can doing this can help add loads of weight to your sound. So

I've just got a couple of examples of the higher frequency distortion. So this is before And this is after. So it just makes it more sparkly and stuff. And I think this next one's my favorite one. So this is before and this is after. And then finally for the cinematic elements bit, playing with your cadence and exaggerating the design. So instead of just having like a singular impact, something like this, you play around with the rhythm and the cadence and you make it just sound a little bit more interesting by doing stuff like this.

And then we have law. So law is probably my favorite one because you're taking into account the actual mythology of the world you're working with. So if you're working with a law rich game, there's going to be tons of things you can pull from for inspiration. So a fantastic example of this is Warhammer 3. So, for just people who may not be familiar, um Warhammer 3 is like a turnbased and real-time tactics video game developed by Creative Assembly and published by Sega. And it's set in the Warhammer fantasy fictional universe from Games Workshop. So, I've brought along just three examples of some UI that I made for the some DLC packs for Warhammer 3. Um, the first of these being for Nurgle. So, Nurgle is the Lord of Decay, and you might be able to guess they're quite an evil faction. Uh, the sound staff for Nurgle is very rooted in gore and squaltches. Basically, just make it sound really gross, and you're probably

doing something right. Um, this UI screen was for a mechanic that allows you to recruit six special unique heroes known as the chieftains, which grant you unique abilities to use in the campaign.

So, I think this is quite a a good example of cognitive load and um creating like an audio language for your sounds. So, I'd like to think anybody familiar with Warhammer 3, when they hear that, they know exactly what faction it's for. My main focus for this screen was just to make it sound um really grotesque to kind of keep with that Nurgle theme. Um, and then because this was for recruiting uh like

generals, I added in things like metal impacts, uh like glass breaks to kind of keep with that up close melee warfare feel. Um, and then just tried to just make it sound evil and kind of grotesque throughout. And then next we have Grand Cafe. So Grand Cafe is strongly based on Imperial China and Chinese fantastical elements. Cath I've always associated their sound with things like Chinese instrumentation and metal because I believe they use a metalbased magic law. Stone because of their giant terra cotta guardian sentinels. and then creature sounds, specifically dragons and lions. So, keeping with that kind of like fantasy element, this UI screen was for a magic compass, which grants different bonuses for the faction depending on which way it's aligned.

So for this screen, I wanted wanted it to sound kind of like powerful, otherworldly. Um, basically like it's an ancient piece

of machinery mixed in with magic. So I added in things like textured magic whooes underneath the mechanicals of the compass and then sort of mechanics of the compass and then um just tried to make the the compass selection sounds sound big and cinematic just to kind of represent how much of an impact it has on the game. And then next we have the kingdom of Kizv. So Kizv has like a huge winter theme. They use things like ice magic and fight alongside uh bears and polar bears and stuff. But this UI screen was just a little bit different to the others as it was for a specific character who is a hag witch that uses powerful hex's incantations and dark magic. So representing this in the sound design was basically my goal. This UI screen was called the witches hut, and it allows you to create powerful blessings or curses that have different effects on gameplay.

So, my main focus for this screen was to make it sound like you're in a spooky cabin in the middle of the woods brewing evil potions. So, I decided to add in an ambience for this screen uh with things like eer tonal wind and then a bubbling cauldron to kind of help sell that idea. This is another thing you can do for UI. You can make an ambiencece which is a really nice little detail you can add if it makes sense for the context of the screen. For the ingredient sound, I use things like bone just to kind of have a catch all for all the different types of ingredients and keep in with that uh spooky witchy vibe. And then the design for the actual incantation effects.

These were quite challenging because one of them is a blessing. So, it's supposed to be a positive effect, but I still wanted to keep it rooted in like dark magic and still make it sound quite malicious. Um, so I tried to do that. And then for the the curse sound, I added in extra things like uh death whistles and screams to try and just make it sound even more evil than the blessings. So, there was a nice contrast between both types of sounds. And then overall, I think this was my favorite UI screen that I did while I worked on the game. So, as I said at the start, this was my first time designing UI for for games. So, I learned a lot of different things in a very short amount of time. Some of these lessons being where appropriate, keep a common theme. So, each faction of Warhammer 3 has a set of group faction vocals and a unique instrumentation. So, I often incorporate these into my design. So if you find something that works for one set of UI, absolutely use those ideas in other

places because then this helps just make a coherent audio uh vision for for for your sounds. Lean into sonic identities more. So for Cath though I do love what I did for this screen. If I was designing that screen now, I would have looked at incorporating more of their Chinese instrumentation and then absolutely would have looked at incorporating some dragon vocals in there because there's basically dragons all over that screen. I think it would have been a quite a cool touch playing with dynamics. So, saving the kind of crazy low-end and big punchy transient stuff for the really important sounds. And then for the less important stuff, maybe making it just a little bit less punchy and not adding so much low frequency content in there cuz it's kind of like if everything sound huge, then nothing does. So, playing with dynamics really allows you to highlight a sound's importance and make it sound absolutely massive. Reusing is okay. It's not cheating.

It also means that the um more bespoke sounds that you do make then just stick out more to the player. Um I often used reuse sounds that were already all over Warhammer 3 and then just like they gave me more time to focus on making the bespoke sounds really good. And then finally do the weird thing. So, one of my favorite UI sounds that I made for Warhammer 3 used some like maniacal laughter from one of the games units called the horrors. So, when I was making this particular sound, I found this maniacal laughter in the game files and then just tried it in the UI cuz I thought, why not? And it worked really well. Luckily, Valentin really liked it. So, then that's what went into the game. So, if you think of something weird that might not fit the usual brief for UI, just give it a go anyway because you can always take it out if it doesn't work. The witches hut, for example, I originally way overdesigned the ambience. I had like wood creeks in there and nature outside and all sorts

and then just ended up stripping it back cuz it was just a little bit too distracting. So, in summary, use UX to make sure your audio is communicating its intention to the player. Make yourself a little brief to follow to focus your design intentions in the right place. And then look everywhere you can for audio inspiration and the audio source to push your designs as far as it can go. Get creative with it. And as long as you follow UX and have a user first approach to design, you will be able to make creative UI sound design with intention. So, thank you all for listening. I hope there was something useful in there for you. If you do want to learn more about UX, lawsofux.com is a really good website to check out. They were also very kind enough to let me use some of their graphics in this presentation. Um, I think we have time for some questions if anybody does have them. Thank you. [applause]

Um, great talk. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Very excited to get into sound design myself coming from live audio. But um, uh, kind of a question I had is kind of a double side. It's, um, when you're talking about like creating some of those heavier, more complex sounds for like the really important um, concepts. What is the first of all communication with either I don't know if it would be the visual design or like animation team? And then have you ever found like a major disconnect between what those things are with like prioritization from one side or the other?
So how do you communicate with the design team when you're make it's it's different for each project. So I'm very lucky cuz foremost is like an outsourcing group. So we get to work with a lot of amazing studios. Um and it's different for each studio. So sometimes we'll talk a lot to the design team and sometimes we'll simply just get like um the thing to design for. Um

so it's different for for for each thing honestly. Um what was the second part of that question? Sorry.
Has there ever been like a major disconnect between maybe you've been told to prioritize or you think to prioritize sound for one thing and maybe the visuals that go along with it don't necessarily match what you would have thought?
I don't think so. Um, all of our clients have really great communication. So, and we're very we get very involved with the the team, so I don't think there's ever a disconnect, honestly. We work with some great people, so it's like it's really cool.
Thank you.
You're very welcome.
Hi. My my question is actually very similar to the previous one. Um, but about communication and collaborating with other members of the audio team, for example, just what's going on with sound effects and music and um what you might have what kind of conversations you have with them and what you might have to consider, what

kind of constraints you have as far as like some of the examples you you showed had uh a really wide audio spectrum, you know, and I'm curious about
conflict with with that type of thing. Um, that's a very very good question. We I personally haven't ran into too many uh issues with that. If we if there's something that is conflicting like in a frequency spectrum or something, it's normally the audio director on the project will basically just be like, "Hey, um, you know, if you could just adapt your sound just a little bit, like maybe take out some of the low end or when we have like an internal review, we have those discussions to make sure that nothing is like conflicting with anything else." that's going on a lot of the time. I think that is sort of um solved with mixing cuz in when you're making games and you've got wise you can like you know duck music if it's going to be interfering or you know you can make space for it in the mixing process

basically. So yeah, it's usually not a huge problem.
Okay. Thank you.
You're welcome.
Hi.
Hi. Um, my question is, is there a sound that you had to redesign a lot of times or what's the sound that took the most amount of tries to get right?
It was probably the incantation effect, I think. Um, I went through quite a few different versions of it. Um, had a lot of uh back and forth with Valentin. Um, but it's not a bad thing. It's like feedback's always good and the thing that it sometimes takes you forever to learn is to just never take it personally because you everyone in the team is just wanting to make the best product you can. And I actually really love it when I have uh like a supervisor who is like very harsh with their criticism because then that just makes me a better sound designer at the end of the day.
Yeah, definitely. Those types of sound effects usually end up being my favorites as well. So,

exactly. Thank you so much. Hi, I just wanted to thank you so much. This was a great talk. Um, but I was wondering if you could speak to your process of sort of like preession planning when it comes to the more like simple sounds of just your typical UI hover of just like the shing on the sword or like a notebook opening diagetic games.
Normally, just try and keep it as simple as possible. Um, and also try to make sure it's not super repetitive. So, try and find a like some source that has a lot of variation in it. I think like um book page flips for example, they all sound very similar, but there's enough where it's not annoying if you're hearing it over and over and over again. Um it's basically all comes down to just finding the right source with enough variation in it. And then you can even extend that if you find something that doesn't have the variation you're looking for. You can just pitch things like up by a semmit tone or down by a semmit tone and that normally makes enough difference for it to not be annoying anymore, basically.
Awesome. Thank you.
You're very welcome.

Cool guys. I think we'll leave it there. Thank you very much. [applause]