Scenario for illustrating playing and social presence/friends activity locations

Picture 1:
It’s Wednesday evening and Johan is on his way home from work, waiting at the bus stop. He tunes into the Social Playlist channel on his mobile phone. There is a song by Kylie Minogue currently being played, “Can’t get you out of my head”.

Picture 2:
Johan brings out his mobile phone from his pocket. By the red color of the screen he directly sees that this song was assigned to the activity of “Work” by one of the friends in the channel. Johan sees that there are currently 7 people in the Social Playlist and smiles to the fact that most of his friends are still at work, and praises the fact that he’s got flexible hours. Himself has himself just turned into the activity of “In transportation”.

Picture 3:
The bus arrives and while standing in line for the bus Johan has a closer look at the screen. He see that this song was chosen by his quite new friend Daniel. “I didn’t know he was into Kylie Minogue” thinks Johan. “But this is definitely a good song”.

Picture 4:
Johan places himself comfortably in the bus as the Kylie Minogue song fades out and a new song turns up in the Social Playlist. This time it is actually one of his assigned songs, a new one by an unknown artist called Morgan Geist. He gets a little bit happy about the fact that his friends will get to hear it since he is really enthusiastic the song. As he has assigned to the activity of “In transportation” he assumes people are now starting to drop out of their offices, as the song would probably not have been played if he was the only one “in transportation”.

Picture 5:
Simultaneously, Johan’s friend in the playlist Peter has just left his work and is heading for his parked car. Peter has never heard the song by Morgan Geist that Johan put to the playlist but instantly likes it and decide that he should check out more songs from the same artist later in the night.

       

Scenario for Creating Account and assigning locations and songs

Picture 1:
Johan is sitting by his computer at home and signs up as a new user of the Social Playlist-service through its web page.

Picture 2:
Johan is asked to assigning his activity locations. He accepts the preset suggested activities “Work”, “Home”, “Going out”, “In transport” and “Shopping” and also adds a own activity called “Exercising”. As he is situated in Malmö, this is also his overall default location. Malmö is shown on a zoomable map where he draws his own areas for each activity directly in the web interface. Each activity can have one or several areas. Each type of activity is connected to a specific color.

Picture 3:
After deciding his activity locations, Johan localises his music directory on his computer and his songs are shown in the interface together with a map of his activity locations in Malmö. Johan drags some of his current favourite songs into the activity locations on the map and hence they are assigned to these different locations. At the activity location of his home he places a song by Leonard Cohen that he always likes to listen to for example when relaxing and going to bed. At the activity location of his work, he places a song by Björk that he likes to listen to while working. As he drags songs into the activity location, the song gets the color of the activity location in his songlist. A song assigned to an activity location is simultaneously assigned to all other activity locations connected to that type of activity.

  

Some more interesting research on expression, collaboration through music

Contexts of Collaborative Musical ExperiencesBlaine, Fels (2003)

We explore a variety of design criteria applicable to the creation of collaborative interfaces for musical experience. The main factor common to the design of most collaborative interfaces for novices is that musical control is highly restricted, which makes it possible to easily learn and participate in the collective experience. Balancing this tradeoff is a key concern for designers, as this happens at the expense of providing an upward path to virtuosity with the interface. We attempt to identify design considerations exemplified by a sampling of recent collaborative devices primarily oriented toward novice interplay. It is our intention to provide a non-technical overview of design issues inherent in configuring multiplayer experiences, particularly for entrylevel players.

The Interactive Dance Club: Avoiding Chaos In A Multi Participant Environment

Ulyate, Bianciardi (2001)

Our primary goal was to deliver musically coherent and visually satisfying results from several participants’ input. The result, the Interactive Dance Club, ran for four nights at the ACM SIGGRPAH 98 convention in Orlando, Florida. In this paper we will briefly describe the Interactive Dance Club, our “10 Commandments of Interactivity”, and what we learned from it’s premiere at SIGGRAPH 98.

Concept #5: (yellow arrow+piece collection) “?”

Remember the map attached with differnt post-its that local band used to indicate their inspirations and activity?

probably we can do something to bring the consumption and production together by using both the yellow arrow idea and the collection pieces idea~

we have the local band mark the locations where they found inspirations, so when people get the the location, they can hear what the local band said about how the place inspired them or …., and people get the piece of the music at that location. In order to hear the whole song, you have to find all the locations related to the music created.

they can also comment on what they hear at that location, and the local band can get their comment too!

p.s. actually anyone can upload songs and create messags for any location as well.

Keyword:
asynchronous
distributed

Reference:
yellow arrow: http://yellowarrow.net/index2.php
mobitip

Concept Map

Problem framing

How can we enable or enhance the way people socialize by using music in the local context of Malmö?

Essentials for Concept Development

aspects to focus on:

Expression and Experience

[the need to express oneself] x N(# of ppl) ==========> a fun/interesting/creative experience & a sense of belonging
……………………………………create something together in the process

Things to bear in mind:

relevancy to mobile computing & shared content

the rationale of the concept should be grounded by field studies or research paper

Concept #4 – Playlisting developed through social network

Focusing on creating a set of music created through the what a network of peers are listening to at the same time.
Depending on what position in your social network one person (direct connection, secondary non-personal connection etc) have different kinds of influence of you.

Keywords:
Distributed location
Synchronous

References:
Last.fm or similar

Concept #2: Collaborative Sound Creation through Motion Tracking

Could be set up in e.g. a bar. When moving, people create sounds. When more people within the tracking area move, they can create sound (music) together. This whole installation could also be rather sublte.

notes: (fibi)

I think this is an interesting project by itself, but i see the danger of its departure from mobile computing and shared content theme.

Concept #3 – Collecting pieces

Main idea of the concept is to create a experience similar to that of collecting car number plates (in which you search for them in the city). Pieces of a song is distributed through the city and you are supposed to collect it all together. You may socialize with other by comparison of what you’ve got, giving hints or tips etc.
Keywords:
Asynchronous
Distributed location

References:
geocaching.com
car number plate spotting