MakerSound
Tangible user interface of sound maker using sensor data
Year
October-March
2019 - 2020
Type
Tangible Interaction Research
TUI, User Experience Design
Role
(team)
UX Designer
-Research-
Exploring the Tangible User Interfaces
The idea of Tangible user interface is to have something that is physical in the hands of the user which represents or symbolizes what they are manipulating. For example, the car steering wheel, pedals and gear shifter in an arcade game controls the virtual car.
Tangible input study with paper model
Unlike the traditional computers, the input is usually a keyboard and/or a mouse and the output is usually visual or auditory, tangible devices allow the user to feel a physical device and use it as a input and/or output modality.
Our idea is to allow people to generate music by making movements other than those made by traditional musical instruments. With the use of computer generated music and tangible user interface with sensors, the focus of this project is to allow the user to generate music with non-traditional movements.
-Development-
Sensor data makes sounds
This project explores the design space of tangible user interfaces and creates a tangible device which will allow the user to generate music depending on how they move the tangible device. The way this is done is by using sensor data generated by three sensors which are inside the tangible device, called a sensor module, and mapping these values to different sounds.
The sensor module is a small 3D-printed box which contains a gyroscope, distance and acceleration sensors connected to an arduino board. There is also an RFiD reader which allows identifying which object the sensor module is connected to and which sensor data will be used. The movement of these objects will trigger the sensors and the sensor data are then mapped to sounds using PureData.