This paper explores the design of digital musical instruments (DMIs) for exploratory play. Based on Gaver's principles of ludic design, we examine the ways in which people come to terms with an unfamiliar musical interface. We describe two workshops with the D-Box, a DMI designed to be modified and hacked by the user. The operation of the D-Box is deliberately left ambiguous to encourage users to develop their own meanings and interaction techniques. During the workshops we observed emergent patterns of exploration which revealed a rich process of exploratory play. We discuss our observations in relation to previous literature on appropriation, ambiguity and ludic engagement, and we provide recommendations for the design of playful and exploratory interfaces.
In this paper we start to explore and unpack the work of Grime music producers and performers with a focus on their attitudes, working practices and use of social media. We explore the origins of grime and describe a complex set of interactions between people and technology in order to facilitate the production and dissemination of audio content in an evolving digital climate. We explore how individuals in this space curate and collect content, with a view to reuse in the future. We also explore how grime is evolving and ways in which technology might be able to facilitate many of these processes more effectively. Finally, we explore technological issues that pertain to music production and dissemination in its current state and implications for design for future applications and contexts.
The research herein describes the investigation of usability of software and hardware tools for musicians. Through an ethnographic approach, the aim is to broaden the scope of investigation and measure the usability of tools for musicians in a real world setting. Six musicians are observed through the planning and preparation stages, rehearsals, performing and postperformance in order to better understand the tools that they use and how these tools could be improved. This work builds on previous investigations into more traditional production environments. This investigation also explores how requirements and tools have changed. The research highlights main areas of usability problems in navigation, clarity of expression, problems in understanding flow and a mismatch between requirements and software tools that currently exist. The results highlight strengths in the flexibility of such systems and identify where they solve traditional, hardware based problems. The paper culminates in a discussion regarding the values, strengths and weaknesses of hard and soft tools and points to potential future directions of research.
We present our case study on gifting digital music, The Rough Mile, as an example of a Framework of Immersive Practice, intended for researchers and practitioners in HCI and interaction design. Although immersion is a frequently used term in the HCI and related literatures, we find no definitions or frameworks that are robust enough to capture the full range of multi-sensory, emotional, and cognitive engagement that the richest of these experiences can entail. We therefore turn to the theatrical performance literature to distil a theory-based framework of practices that can apply to interdisciplinary projects as well as works with an entirely aesthetic aim. The design choices and findings of The Rough Mile are presented in terms of this framework, leading to a discussion of the design guidelines that can shape its use in any HCI or interaction design project aiming for a deep, personal engagement through technology.
This novel research presents the results of an ethnographic study, which focused upon the production of an EP created by an amateur and a pro-amateur producer. The research presents their production practices across the production workflow, from inception and ideation through to completion. The paper describes the distinct processes that occur when collaborating on the production of the EP. The exploration here discusses the use of software systems to facilitate production of a series of music tracks. We further explicate the use of technologies in the production settings, and these range from mobile devices (smartphones) through to digital audio workstations. Further to this, we start to map out how the technology used affords and supports collaboration and communication across a distributed context. We respond to our findings by presenting a series of design implications that address the research.
Listening to music on the move is an everyday activity for many people. This paper proposes geotracks and geolists, music tracks and playlists of existing music that are aligned and adapted to specific journeys. We describe how everyday walking journeys such as commutes to work and existing popular music tracks can each be analysed, decomposed and then brought together, using musical adaptations including skipping and repeating parts of tracks, dynamically remixing tracks and cross-fades. Using a naturalistic experiment we compared walking while listening to geotracks (dynamically adapted using GPS location information) to walking while listening to a fixed playlist. Overall, participants enjoyed the walk more when listening to the adaptive geotracks. However adapting the lengths of tracks appeared to detract from the experience of the music in some situations and for some participants, revealing trade-offs in achieving fine-grained alignment of music and walking journeys.
The investigation that follows presents the results of a series of workshops with professional musicians and music producers. The work here elicits requirements for musicians in terms of software systems. The scope here explores how to design systems to support creativity and collaboration while maintaining a usable system-one which is effective, efficient and satisfies the user. The format models that of similar workshops, where a three-pronged approach is taken to focus on three different types of creativity: exploratory, combinatorial and transformational approaches. Participants describe a story that defines different user roles and expectations. Focus groups help to refine and combine the existing experiences and begin identify ways in which systems can be made more usable, and support more creative ways of working. We consider the broader consideration of usability, including defining and describing different user types and how their views of usability may differ or even be at odds. Our findings show that while existing systems are very good at supporting traditional usability metrics they may not consider the broader implications of a considered and holistic user experience.
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