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* concepts |
* design |
* prototype |
* user study |
* publications |
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* process |
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| The
study
took place during winter of 2003-04. It consisted of observing how a
set
of participants used
the prototype in their own everyday environment during a limited
period of time, and in collecting their feedback about it. The study participants had various backgrounds, activities, ages, music tastes, and perceptions of the city of Göteborg. In order to gain insight into their everyday environments, the type of path they would take, and their perception of them, we started by giving them cultural probes (individual self-contained small packages handed-out to users in order to gather information about their everyday life) prior to the testings. This also helped determining where the test sessions would be conducted, as they had to take place in the users' everyday environments. Participant were each given a cultural probe for a few days, with instructions to only open it and proceed when taking a path they would have taken anyway. The probes contained the assignment of documenting a single everyday path with a digital still camera, taking pictures of obstacles, resources and what would catch their attention. Then, they would write down answers to both clear and ambiguous questions about their path, draw their own map of it, put stickers where the pictures had been taken, and locate themselves on a larger city map (see user pages - links below user pictures in results' part). Eventually, we let each participant use the prototype in the documented area. The users were told how the system worked but not where to walk or how to behave. Each user was video-filmed in action and the music produced recorded on a MiniDisc. This enabled a close study of paths and behaviours during use. Each session was completed with in-depth interviews about the experience. We then
synchronised the videos with corresponding sounds for analysis
purposes. This allowed us to get a deeper understanding of the details
of interactions by linking interactions with musical results, and
repeating playbacks. The videos were first watched together with each
user in order to collect their own comments and analysis of the
sessions, and followed by complementary interviews. By synchronising
these comments with the videos, we could compare the users' feedback
with an objective analysis of their behaviours, while avoiding
misunderstandings about their intentions. |
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* results |
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The study showed that mobility could indeed become a musical interaction between a user and her urban environment, enhancing her perception of and engagement with these everyday settings. The study also opened the question of how to improvise and adapt one's musical interaction when confronted to a lack of control due to unpredictable and uncontrollable factors encountered in urban environments. The city was perceived to be more in control of this interaction than the user. However, she was able to actively influence how the music was created through different tactics and through situated interventions, all of them related to how the system was designed, what it highlighted and thus how it encouraged her to act. In terms of
interaction, the users were engaged on the level
of the global path and of local interactions. Both levels were managed
in an ad hoc, rather improvised way. Paths were most often planned in
advance by the users but were sometimes randomly or intentionally
modified during the course of a session in order to look for more
interesting contexts and test how they would sound (e.g. a noisy
construction site for [A.S.], a dark corner next to an
electricity chamber
for [D.R.]).
Participants looked around themselves to seek local
interactions opportunities, which they also found by accident (e.g.
metallic objects). Some had favourite inputs, such as human voices for [M.K.]
or noisy traffic for [F.M.]. On a local level,
the users actively directed sensors with
their body. In order to produce input, they often got closer to fixed
artefacts at hand such as metal or walls. They also turned their body
and thus the sensors towards or against diffused sources of input in
order to amplify respectively shadow them, thus modulating the city's
input. [D.R.]
turned his back on traffic to reduce the impact of the sound
level for example. Paths could thus be considered as a score
articulated by ad
hoc local bodily interactions. For more information about
each
study participant, click on the initials below the pictures. |
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The
following video shows small segments of different testing sessions. For
more information and videos, check the user pages by clicking on the initials below the pictures. |
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