By Oliver Greive, M.S. HCI/d Student at Indiana University Bloomington
Me playing one of my mom's harps, sometime in the early 2000s
Being raised by classical musicians, my brother and I couldn't escape the 'musical household' trope. This was ultimately for the best, since we both carry a passion for music into our respective (and non-musical) professional fields to this day. So, when it came time to choose a design space for my HCI/d capstone project I knew that music was the only way forward.
Over the years, I've explored various fields like linguistics, art history, interactive media studies and French literature, ultimately leading me to human-computer interaction (HCI) and user experience (UX) design. For some reason these academic interests never overlapped with my passion for music. I see this capstone project as a way to bring these aspects of my life together for the first time.
Fortunately, I see plenty of material to explore in the coming months. Music has always changed with the development of new technologies and has often created new technologies in itself. The perspectives offered by UX design lend themselves very well to examining these technologies in terms of their design elements.
Interestingly, I've found a serious lack of UX perspectives in the design and use of music technologies like Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) and Virtual Software Instruments (VSTs). I plan to address this gap by looking at the design of musical instruments and music software at the experience level.
Musical skill: Awareness of and sensitivity to musical elements: pitch, rhythm, timbre, melody, harmony, arrangement and composition.
e.g. Composing a piece for the piano in four-part harmony, transcribing this piece down a half step.
Technical skill: Knowledge of and expertise with a tool, system, or device. In the context of music technologies, this means familiarity with elements like: reverb, delay, quantization, sample rate, sequencing, velocity etc.
e.g. Quantizing a MIDI drum track to 16th notes, adding delay and a bit of reverb to give it a 'live' feeling.
Techno-Musical skill: Ability to use a technical tool, system, or device in a musical way.
e.g. Using a modular synthesizer to establish a key signature and configure a 16-step sequence, all triggered by the output of a delay module.
At its core, the metaphor of 'playing something like an instrument' is driving this exploration. To me, this metaphor means interacting with a designed artifact skillfully and artfully. In this way, I use the word instrument to encompass traditional musical instruments, software instruments, and potentially other software tools depending on the context (Berklee College Of Music, 2020). Admittedly, I'm narrowing down broad terms like 'musical' and 'technical' to fit the overall scope of this project. I also think that I'll adjust these definitions as I immerse myself more in this domain.
I'm approaching the primary topics in this domain by contrasting two design exemplars on the basis of their features, and examining their affordances and limitations.
(Simplicity vs. Control)
The first topic is the relationship between simplicity and control. To illustrate this, I'll compare two popular Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs): GarageBand and Logic Pro. Both of these are very popular for a variety of audiences such as podcasters, sound designers, musicians and producers.
The GarageBand User Interface (transverseaudio.com)
The Logic Pro X User Interface (Apple.com)