Week 1: Class Introduction + Project Proposal

Lecture Class

Our first class start with Dr. Aslina introducing herself and a short pre-class introduction session to understand students' expectations better. Dr. Aslina introduce the class outline, lesson plan for us and brief us about what are we going to do and learn in this module. Our module is separate into two classes; one is lecture class on Monday with Dr. Aslina while one is tutorial class on Tuesday with Mr. Ron. We are going to learn about HCI in lecture class while do tutorial in tutorial class. The class ended with a short HCI quiz that help us to understand HCI better. 

Week 1 Tasks

Our first task is to create a short introduction slide, that consists of our profile pictures, basic personal information and introduce a little bit about ourselves. We also need to take a test to understand our learning style. 

My introduction:

Our next task is project proposal. Since for WBL students, we already have our own project, we do not need to propose a new project, but to use our own project and provide the details needed for the project proposal documentation. The documentation includes problem statement and analysis, objectives and proposed solution, add in references if applicable. 

Tutorial Class

In the class, we focus on completing week 1 task which is the project proposal. We show Mr. Ron the progress on the proposal and ask for feedback. For my project, I have only completed the problem statement and analysis, so I show Mr. Ron those. The direction for the proposal is correct, but it needs a better phrasing. So, I amend my documents based on the feedback given. 

My project proposal:

Problem Statement & Motivation

Listening to music has become a more passive experience where one clicks and scroll on screen to pick and choose the songs. This music listening journey becomes digitally diluted and create emotional distance between the human and music. Listeners lack of an environment which is interactive and being able to visualize the music, an experience that deep in emotional engagement that connect with the artist’s legacy. The music is heard but the presence of the artist and visualization of music is lacking. How do we transform this passive music experience into more guided and emotional engaged experience using interactive spatial design?

 

Problem Analysis

Currently, the project achieves the immersive quality in the environment, but the interactivity can be better. The immersive environment is successfully created with the beautiful songs, specifically designed light animation and environmental set-up. The room ambience changed with each song, allowing visitors to dive into different vibes that matched the song. However, the interactivity is limited if there are just songs played repeatedly without any user input.

There should be a way to improve and personalized an interactive music experience for each visitor such as a music playlist generator (Griffiths et al., 2016) which able to detect human emotions and according to it, generate a playlist that suits the person, or some practices that provide similar results.

 

Objectives & Proposed Solution

Objectives

·        To create an immersive spatial experience that allow visitors to enjoy music in a designed and dynamic environment

·        To integrate multisensory design elements including lighting, sound and kinetic elements to heighten interactivity between user and installation

·        To create a theme-specific lighting installation for Malaqa Cultural House’s exhibition

Proposed Solution

Design specific light animation for specific songs proposed by museum owner that will be used in this exhibition, to create a dynamic yet immersive environment for museum visitors to enjoy the songs of the artists. This immersive music experience allows visitors to connect with the artists and the works more deeply, allowing music visualization to occur. The interaction between visitors and installation can be improves by using specifically designed cassette player interaction. The interaction is:

1.   1. Choosing a cassette (with a specific theme) based on their current mood or expected experience

2.   2. Place the cassette into the cassette player and wait for the light animation to altered

3.   3. Walk around the installation and room space to enjoy the immersive musical environment

Week 1 Reflection

In this week, I mainly focused on the project proposal. There is not too much works, so I continue with my WBL works smoothly. HCI class seems fun, both of the lecturers are friendly, and I can feel their passion on HCI topics. I have a very surface-level of understand of HCI as we did have some short lectures on HCI before, but it was all surface-level. I hope that I can really understand HCI in this module and improve my design based on what I've learned.