Great audio logos can work as branded signifiers - and the subtleties of sound are increasingly being incorporated into products, too. But how much noise is too much? Are there really any benefits to owning a microwave with its own soundtrack?

Tinder's swiping mechanic has been co-opted to flog everything from cars to lipsticks to jobs. Now, the app is attempting to differentiate its brand again, this time in the realm of audio, by replacing its current stock noises with carefully designed sound effects.

Voice recognition tech is becoming increasingly advanced, leading more people to use it in their everyday lives; the virtual assistant market is set to be worth $3.07 billion by 2020, and Amazon expects to sell ten million Echo devices in 2017 alone. But do people really want to chat to their devices?

How can brands solve the problem of limited smartphone storage? What happens after AI becomes normalised? And why is design-led hardware the most effective? As part of our Expert Outlook 2017 series, we speak to three technology experts about how our devices are evolving.