Paper: MiniBands – A collaborative mobile music concept
Posted by Fredrik | Filed under Mobile, Papers
About two months ago I presented my master thesis. A concept for mobile music collaboration. Here is the full paper for anyone interested. Please refer to this paper if referencing any of the content.
Abstract
We have come a long way since industrial society, where specialization and monotone labor was part of a bigger distributed cognitive system. Today society rewards creativity, ideas and versatility. Teaming up with others for additional competence is a natural way to get this process started. One and the same person could come up with ideas, create and test them, and eventually launch them. Demands on music today are high, it needs to be mobile, accessible and (almost) free. The concept of owning music has become a loose concept since the introduction of Napster, Limewire, Kazaa, DC and torrent programs that through different approaches has made music more or less free. Being able to listen to music wherever we are is something that has been taken for granted since the first walkman. But what about creating music? So far this has been a very stationary process that requires expensive equipment and a lot of time. This thesis aims to turn an advanced process like music composing into a mobile concept where beginners, as well as trained musicians, could find their way. We had to research ways to create an application that could reach as many users as possible and be easy enough for beginners, while at the same time challenging for experts. Music creation is often a collaboration between artists/musicians, each of them an expert (virtuoso) on their instrument. On MiniBands a band still consists of band members, and why should it not? In the concept we propose in this thesis we want to keep some of the individual virtuoso expert approach, but make it easy, mobile and accessible. A band will still consist of different members, each with their own, perhaps favorite, instrument. MiniBands, the system that we propose in this thesis, allows an easy, mobile interface where users have to develop music in cooperation with other users and eventually publish and distribute it over the web. MiniBands will work closely with artists but even closer with users. Allowing users to try their MiniBands skills with professional musicians will be an incentive that could bring a lot of amateurs to the application. MiniBands will be a completely new way to interact and create music that might be different to that which experts (artists) are used to. This thesis discusses what will make users want to be a part of the Minibands concept and how to create the application for web and mobile. Unlike other popular music games Minibands is not about hitting notes at the right time but about creating actual music. And unlike other musical sequencers Minibands is about creating music together. MiniBands does not intend to replace music-making as it is, but it might give composers an easy way to record their ideas or help to spawn new ones, through an intuitive and playful interface.
Download the full paper here
Following the iPhone hype
Posted by Fredrik | Filed under Design, Interaction Design, Lonely Duck, Mobile, Papers, Portfolio, Work, iPhone
Lonely Duck has entered the realm of iPhone development. It is an exiting new world full of opportunities and challenges. A couple of weeks ago we landed our first client project for the iPhone and it will be out later this month. During this time we also created a game with the appealing name Full Metal Throttle Chopper. Basically the application works as the throttle of a motorcycle, with a realistic engine behavior and both speed and RPM gauge. Just twist your cell phone to rev the virtual throttle. Tilt it to shift and off you go. As if these features isn’t enough, solely the tag line will make you buy it:
Ever wanted to leave the office in the middle of the day, gear up and go riding on the open highway? The sun in your eyes, all troubles left behind, a free spirit roaming the badlands with nothing but freedom and opportunities ahead.
Or maybe you just want peoples’ attention at parties? Whichever dream you hope to fulfill Throttle Chopper is the app for you.
Reflections
When you are a person interested in different types of interaction methods and interfaces the iPhone is truly a toy. People will be interacting through location, proximity, acceleration, sound and touch. So much can be done, but what applications has been at the top of the paid apps list? iFart, iGirl and iBeer! Is this saying something about the current state of the world, about financial crisis or depression. I´m not at all qualified to say, but it´s clear that iPhone apps are going through a maturing process. The market is flooded with simple applications that are claiming to do ONE thing, this thing of course differs between applications, but they do this one thing and at the moment that is all it takes! These applications will be downloaded and used a couple of times for kicks. They bring an instant payback for the buyer by doing exactly what the say they do. So what would the lead word of the first generation iPhone apps be, I guess, Simplicity.
Paper: The Semantic Mp3 player
Posted by Fredrik | Filed under Papers
Abstract
Our goal with this project is to construct a prototype for a semantic mp3‐player. We want this device to be smart enough to classify and categorize different audio tracks into different genres and subgenres. Apart from these features it should also be capable of understanding what the user wants to listen to. The prototype itself will not be able to do any of these things, but it will give a complete visualization of how these different tasks and features would work. How this would actually work will be more discussed in this paper.
Download paper here!
Paper: Industrial Soundscapes
Posted by Fredrik | Filed under Papers
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to shed some light on the concepts of creating digital soundscapes and audio augmented reality. Research in this particular field is mainly carried out within the ubiquitous computing community. Even though the technology for a small scaled approach of this concept is already at hand, it will take some time to make technology for it as ubiquitous as researchers want it to be.
Download paper here!
Paper: Extending Mobile Social Software With Contextual Information
Posted by Fredrik | Filed under Papers
Abstract
This article points out how mobile contextual information can enhance social networking tasks through mobile social software. Since the mobile phone is considered a personal belonging by most people, the context of the mobile phone is treated as the context of its user. The contextual information of the mobile phone can enhance and make social networking tasks easier to perform on the go. The article shows that vital communicative and social information can be extracted from four types of mobile contextual information: physical, computational, time and user context. This article also covers the issues concerning personal integrity and security when social softwares can pinpoint or map user behavior through contextual information.
Download paper here!
Paper: Folksonomies – Power to the people (Sv)
Posted by Fredrik | Filed under Papers
Abstract
In recent years there has been a development of Web 2.0 services which supply a simpler way of communicating and sharing information over the Internet. Earlier, Web 2.0 has been a synonym for the semantic web which is a universal medium for giving web content a meaning for computer machines. Out of Web 2.0 services Folksonomies has been developed which is a way for users to tag their own Internet material for later and easier information retrieval.
Folksonomies are useful in that way it categorizes information instead of how the earlier semantic web classified web pages and its information. It uses a kind of bottom-up strategy created by users own intuitive way of organizing information. A strategy, were the human intelligence is embedded in the system.
Download paper here!
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