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MusicCube: a physical experience with digital music

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Abstract

Listening to digital music on a computer has led to a loss of part of the physical experience associated with earlier media formats such as CDs and LPs. This paper presents a series of steps and decisions that led to the design of MusicCube, a tangible user interface that allows users to control digitally stored music on a computer by means of gestures and positioning. Interaction with the MusicCube is enriched by offering feedback through multi-coloured light effects and clicking sounds together with computer-generated speech. Despite some ergonomic shortcomings, when comparing to the iPod, users appreciated the design and enjoyed using it.

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References

  1. Bruns Alonso M, Keyson DV (2005) MusicCube: making digital music tangible. In: Proceedings of CHI’05, ACM Press, pp 1176–1179

  2. Ishii H, Ullmer B (1997) Tangible bits: towards seamless interfaces between people, bits and atoms. In: Proceedings of CHI’97 ACM Press, pp 234–241

  3. Li T, Ogihara M, Li Q (2003) A comparative study on content-based music genre classification. In: Proceedings of SGIR’03, ACM Press, pp 282–289

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the friends and colleagues who have helped and supported us during this project. In particular we thank Rob Luxen and Marc de Hoogh for technical support in building the working prototype. Photos were made by Aldo Hoeben.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ID StudioLab, Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Landbergstraat 15, 2628, CE Delft, The Netherlands

    Miguel Bruns Alonso & David V. Keyson

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  1. Miguel Bruns Alonso
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  2. David V. Keyson
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Correspondence to Miguel Bruns Alonso.

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Bruns Alonso, M., Keyson, D.V. MusicCube: a physical experience with digital music. Pers Ubiquit Comput 10, 163–165 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-005-0009-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-005-0009-8

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