IV. Conclusions
The goal of our project MusicBook was to let children have easy access to fun and engaging music by playing with the instrument book, as well as developing collaboration consciousness. Our definition of interaction is
“A mutual activity with meaningful information exchanged between two minds or more (designers, computers, audience, users, etc.) with minimal interference from other external forces.”
In this sense, our project introduced a high level (in quantity and quality) of information exchange in user experiences. Players could freely utilize the music language to communicate with other players and express their emotions. However, in real practice, we found out that users often required extra instructions or hints when playing the touchless guitar, suggesting a lack of self-explanation in this project. A better project could be more self-explanatory so that “interference from other external forces” could be minimized.
Aside from this minor issue, generally, our audience experienced a lot of fun and collaboration during their interaction with our project. Some feedbacks were that they were surprised by the good touch feedback from the combination of push buttons and keyboards, and that our aesthetic decoration was visually appealing.
If more time was given, we would have made a third piece of a drum set (or just s percussion set) with weight sensors (to manipulate the accent and volume of the percussions). The most important lessons that I learned, were 1. never be shy to reach out for help, but do independent critical thinking first, do not rely on others 2. never be afraid or discouraged by mistakes, because failures teach you how to improve and eventually succeed.