Student Design Challenge: It's magic!

"Build a prompt, scenario or costume that will challenge our assumptions of normality and will let your team have a Copperfield moment."

-Full Design Prompt

Overview

'Musical Potions' is an experience design that enhances the tactual experience of everyday artifacts and turns the familiar into extraordinary. By using Arduinos, gyroscopes, LEDs, wireless bluetooth connections, and a Microsoft Xbox Kinect sensor, we are able to take ordinary objects and embed them with light and sound which people can interact with to capture, create, and mix music.  

Our team has been invited to present at the 8th International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction (TEI) in Munich, Germany on February 16th, 2014 to present our design. 

Proof of Concept

-Deliverable 

This video is to demonstrate how magic happens in everyday life and how we make musical notes by touching tangible artifacts by means of a MaKey MaKey.

Reflection

This was my first project where I got to work with second-year master students in the Human-Computer Interaction Design Program at Indiana University. At the time, I was only a few weeks into my first year as a HCID student and design was new to me.  I had to learn new methods as they were unfolded and research what currently technologies were available to make our design functional.

What I learned through this experience is that you can build anything! Though I didn't know at first how Ardinos worked or the methods used to craft an entire user experience, I knew how to be creative and have fun which helped contribute directly to our storyboard and brainstorming ideas of interactions. The best part of this entire experience has been exploring new ways to interact with music through objects and people.

Design