You can also find a short film clip about Duet Beat here.
Context and Significance:
As mentioned in my blog post for our group research project, I define interaction as an activity between at least two actors that includes reciprocal processes of receiving information, processing information, and giving out feedbacks. However, I find this definition difficult to cover the essence of interaction in the context of physical computing after I have encountered ‘Ethical Things‘ because the development of technology enables us to unlock so many possibilities. What truly fascinates our contemporary users, I think, should be that the variety of sensors could transmit individualized inputs and, of course, give customized outputs depending on time, space and users’ conditions. This characteristic is also in line with the belief of ‘human-centered design’ as we have mentioned in one of our lectures. When designing our group research project, ‘Sfeeder‘, we integrated this user-centered idea by adding health detecting functions and this belief is no different from our midterm project ‘Duet Beat’. The unique thing about our project is that the rhythm our users will get is totally based on their own mental state and creativity. Before attaching the sensors to his or her body, the user would not know what are they going to get with the machine. Also, it is very easy for everyone to use. Taking advantage of the built-in melody, the difficulty of composing one’s own song has been significantly reduced. By building ‘Duet Beat’, I believe we are getting closer to the ideal of building the computer for ‘the rest of us’, as is stated in Igoe and O’Suvillian’s article. We hope that everyone, no matter amateur or professional, can create their own music immediately when they are inspired. Without the complicated user interface, music creation is closer to us than ever.
Conception and Design:
What we would like to create was a machine that is easy to use so we tried to make our design as simple as possible. We managed to fit two Arduinos, two breadboards, two battery cases, and all the jumper cables into a small box so the entire equipment won’t seem clumsy. Except for the main body, users can only directly see the heart rate sensor and the keyboard for them to create music so it is unlikely to cause their misunderstandings to the usage of Duet Beat. Although in many aspects we minimized our design, we tried to use as more LED lights as possible to clearly indicate the status of the machine. As for the material, we used wood because it is one of the few materials that were provided for laser cutting but we find it very suitable for our project. In fact, most of the musical instruments, especially those western ones, are made of wood so using wood is one of the few characteristics that Duet Beat inherited from our tradition. Unlike other materials such as plastic or cardboard, wood can better transfer the sound from our buzzers. The other part of design I would like to mention is our keyboard. In the final form of Duet Beat, the keyboard is divided by lines and we find this design not intuitive. People tend to press on the board instead of using their hand as a blade to let the distance sensor capture their movements, despite that the width of each key is already small. Perhaps, we should add some guidance or reminder on the box to illustrate its correct usage. Professor Godoy said that we can simply design the box using the shape of a heart and the keyboard using the shape of a blade, which I also think is a good idea to implement.
Fabrication and Production:
We began with the design of circuits. I was mainly in charge of the keyboard part and at the very beginning, I found that the readings from the IR distance sensor were inaccurate. It was often the case that the tones would change even my hands haven’t moved. To settle this problem, I made adjustments to both the hardware and software. By seeking information on the Internet, I found that the readings can be easily affected by the currency that went through the sensor. The online instructions advised us to add a low pass filter to make sure that the currency is stable. After trying capacitors of 10 μF and 100 μF as well as 1kΩ and 10kΩ resistors, the readings’ stability had been improved but still can’t meet the standard to make a keyboard. In the end, I separated the sensor from the main circuit and offered it separated power supply. I also cleaned the pins to make sure that the current can go through smoothly. After hours of trial, I found that installing the sensor higher from the table and change the detecting interval from 500 to 380 would make the situation better. In the last day, I finally settled the problem of unstable readings. The other crucial step in the making of the main body. We tried to make the body as small as possible and this posed a problem to us as for how to arrange the inner layout. In the end, we have to put the battery cases vertically and overlay the breadboard on the Arduino. We understand that doing so is at the risk of poor contact so we are more than careful when putting all the components in. Luckily, we did not have to compensate on the compact design in the end. Due to sudden design changes, Duet Beat did not participate in Friday’s user test session but we still collected some feedback from our friends and peers working at the lab. Just as I mentioned before, the most confusing part was the design of the keyboard. However, there were also users think that the usage of the keyboard is interesting because creating music without having to touch anything brings a futuristic feeling. Also, to allow users better understand Duet Beat’s working status, we put an LED on each of the keyboards so they would know which tone they were playing. One user said that we should switch the location of the LEDs and keyboard indication but unfortunately, we were unable to do so due to the position of holes preserved for cables. This is what we should consider in future developments.
Conclusions:
The goal of our project is to create a customized music maker that is accessible to everyone and unlock people’s creation potentials. We achieved the goal of having individualized input and giving customized outputs but definitely, we can do better. The rhythms generated from the heart rate sensor were pre-determined so it is still not customized enough. I hear that nowadays artificial intelligence is already capable of composing their own music and I look forward to adopting that technology into Duet Beat. The interaction between Duet Beat and our audience includes two parts, one is the basic rhythm generated from the readings of heart rate and the other is the tones of the keyboard by capturing their physical movements. If we have more time, the first thing to do is to add a switch. The current design of our project does not allow users to turn it off without breaking into its main body, which is not energy-efficient and also potentially dangerous. The other thing we can improve is to redesign the keyboard part, not only to make its usage more intuitive but also to cover the cables that were exposed in the air. From my perspective, the lessons I have learned from my failures and setbacks are the most valuable part of the midterm project. I finally found out how difficult it is to put the blueprint into reality. First, we may not be able to find a practical way to realize our ideal design. Even if we have come up with the solution, the results we get may be far from our expectations and this is the primary reason for us to abandon our first prototype. When making our project, I always think that ensuring the stability of core functions is our priority but my partner Guangbo often came up with ideas to add new features. Without him, I don’t think we can develop Duet Beat to that far. Even if sometimes, adding new features resulted our code does not work anymore, he did not choose to give up. I see the courage of stepping out of the comfort zone on him, which is something that I need to develop in my future.
Meanwhile, I learned the valuable lesson of how to gain back confidence after experiencing failure. When I was trying to insert numerous pins into the breadboard, I almost lost my patience because there were simply too many capacitors crowding together for those LEDs. However, Candy Bi, who was working on her project next to me on that day, kept encouraging me and told me not to be in a hurry. I was indeed moved by her encouragement because, you know, sometimes that kind of word is exactly you need when you want to give up. I am so glad to meet all these peers that supported me to go this far on the course of making Duet Beat. I still remember that day when Professor Cossovich told us that by taking interaction lab, some people learn more about coding, some people learn more about design, some people learn more about interaction, etc. and he thought that we could come up with better projects. Now, after finishing making my midterm project, I would like to say that in the future, I may forget about Arduino, forget about Processing, forget the definition of interaction. But the courage and perseverance I gained from the experience of making Duet Beat, I believe, would carry on with me to face bigger challenges. The life lesson I have had when doing the midterm project is totally beyond my expectation and I appreciate having that chance to reflect on my drawbacks.