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A café is a type of restaurant that typically serves coffee and tea, in addition to light refreshments such as baked goods or snacks. Nowadays, students also consider cafés as a social place to do various activities. The different activities might need a different environment. However, the existing studies regarding the soundscape in a café do not consider the different activities and only focus on the auditory aspects. In this study, the activities in a café and the important audio-visual aspects are identified. This information is beneficial to design appropriate cafés environment for different student activities. The data were collected using an online survey. The survey asked several pieces of information such as activity preference and audio-visual preference. The survey shows that the students' activities in a café are classified into four types: discussion-chatting (27%), group-studying (27%), eating drinking (20%), self-studying (16.5%), and others (9.6%). The survey also shows the five most important audio and visual aspects in a café: general noise (13.61%), dynamics (8.9%), the loudness of music (8.12%), color contrast (8.12%), and hubbub (7.85%).

The concept of soundscape aims to provide a more holistic understanding of the acoustic environment by taking several aspects into account, such as human perception, the acoustic environment and the context of the space. The soundscape concept is primarily concerned with the human experience and is considered more effective to access the acoustic quality of urban areas than traditional sound measurement. Soundscape analysis was used in this study to determine the relationship between various activities occurring in urban areas and their associated sound sources. This relationship can be used as design guidance for urban soundscape. The interaction was analyzed using the soundscape expectation approach, which is based on people’s memories of urban areas. The participants of this study were requested to compose an ideal acoustic environment according to their expectation for doing four activities: reading, relaxing, talking with friends, and playing with children. According to the data of the participants’ composition there is no significant difference in the overall sound levels between various activities. As a result, the appropriate acoustic environment cannot be determined solely based on the overall sound level. Individuals have varying expectations of sound sources when engaging in various activities.