October 04, 2005

Device, Instrument, Tool Project

This is the second group project for Physical Computing. You can see the description of all the group projects here.

During the first week, we gathered observations on an action that influenced a medium. This is what we found:

Action: Setting up and re-arranging a playlist using iTunes.
In a party setting, using iTunes to manipulated song playlists can be frustrating. iTunes expects only a single person to be creating and arranging playlists at any one time. Having multiple people trying to set up a playlist or just choose a song to play doesn't work very well when there is only one mouse. In addition, in a party situation a rather delicate device like the computer would be best kept out of sight (and spill-range).

The goal of the activity is to arrange the songs in a playlist in a desired order and have those songs play, in that order.

A person involved in this activity needs to be quite focused on the computer: They may have to use the keyboard to enter text to search on, and then they also must use fine motor controls to select the specific songs they want to play, and then either create a new playlist or drag them to a specific playlist. Next, they must order the playlist, and finally they need to click "play." The person doing the task typically needs to use both hands and must remain focused on the computer screen the whole time.

The only characteristics to take as given in this medium are the song files on the computer. Mouse- and keyboard-driven input are not the only means of sending information to a computer, and in order to find a tool that allows more expressive action in this medium, we expect to have to look to alternative forms of inputting song information to the computer.

Here is a video of a sample observation of someone attempting to create a playlist:

What's Ahead
As a first-draft idea, we plan to create a kind of a cartridge-based song selection system, using CDs as a visual/tactile metaphor for actual songs. A playlist can be arranged by arranging the order of the CD jewel cases in a standing CD rack.

Posted October 4, 2005 01:36 AM. Categories: Group Projects , Week 4 | Permalink