Fake Camera Sounds - Adding the wrong noise for the right reaon...

Digital cameras are a wonderful advancement in photography: they lower the cost and trouble involved with film, provide instant feedback on every shot, and can fit almost anyone's budget and pocket. But there's something that was lost in the transition: the audible sounds of the shutter snap and film advancement. Most point-and-shoot digital cameras have a shutter snap so faint that it can be difficult to hear even when you're listening for it - and none of the noisy film-advancement motors of the film cameras of yore. While it might seem that making a product quieter is generally a good thing, it turns out that users have come to depend on the sounds of the camera for feedback that the shot has actually taken place; without that feedback, neither the photographer or the subject is quite sure if the moment was properly captured. Digital cameras have been designed with different kinds of feedback to deliver that confirmation - beeps and bloops, freezing the live image on the LCD - but none have been immune to misinterpretation (beeps can mean anything, and a momentarily-frozen live image might mean the camera has crashed!). That big clunky shutter sound and the following sound of film advancement still do the trick - and that's why quite a few digital cameras have those sounds built in as the default. It's anachronistic, it's inappropriate, it's extra noise in an already noisy world - but darn it, it works for the user. And that, my friends, is usability design!
(See also: fake engine sounds on electric sports car.)