Project Name: Music Kits

Members

Tony Baek

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Stella Kim

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Jay Han

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Description of the assignment

The purpose of this assignment was to learn and become familiar with the tunable user interface, and the Music Player was used as an example of a TUI. Our idea is based on the concept of "Smoke and Mirrors," which need to be implemented like real-world engineering. It's not only about interacting with a 2D flat screen but also about handling physical objects to interact with the music player.

Description of our team’s approach

1. Getting inspiration for the principle of interaction from physical objects

• Covid-19 Test Kits - Tubes

  We first explored objects commonly found around us in our daily lives. For example, the free Covid-19 test kit from school stood out, and we found that it has physical properties that can hold and store something and are easy to carry. So we thought each tube in the kit could serve as an album or playlist.

• Dropper

  We went to Arch and explored if any objects could apply to our music players. We found the dropper and its characteristics of it were interesting. A dropper is a tool used to suck up a liquid or drop something in general, which we thought we could make a metaphor for the behavior a user could take when choosing a particular song within an album.

• A tube storage container used in a laboratory:

  Many laboratories use perforated containers to store multiple cylinders or tubes. It reminded us of a single container that holds all the playlists, so we incorporated it into our player.

• Liquidity

  Liquidity is one of our players' core physical principles. Previously, we used beads, but the physical characteristics and size of beads presented numerical limitations when dealing with playlists or albums. Therefore, we did not think it was necessary to artificially limit the number of songs or albums in a playlist or album. This is what motivated us to introduce the concept of a liquid with fluid properties. Our expectations were that the contents would spread out like a liquid when we poured the tube. Conversely, when the song was placed on the wheel, it would be absorbed and dropped with a dropper.

• Wheel - Music Island

  This wheel functions as a sort of experimental stand where we can drop the tube, as well as to adjust the volume and select songs. The wheel's round physical shape coincides with the feeling of the liquid spreading.

2. Designing UI and animation reflecting the physical proportions and characteristics of objects

• The physical objects above are the primary materials that make up our music players and define how they interact. Our main challenge is to design a tangible UI so that users can naturally interact with objects in the player where the projection takes place.
• Animation is one visual aid that helps the UI look more natural. We designed an animation so that users can dynamically feel the liquidity of our music players. For example, when we pour a tube onto the music island, songs inside are visualized in animation as if they were spreading in the center like a liquid.

How it works

1.mov

1. Pick up the playlist and display it on the device

2.mov

1. Choose songs (Next, Previous, play song)