TangiBand
Powered by Augmented Reality and AIoT technology, “TANGIBand” provides children with an intuitive, accessible, engaging, and natural way to learn music, therefore, building an inclusive, equitable, and inspiring classroom.
Client
Individual Project
Year
Oct - Dec 2022
Service
Agumented Reality, IoT, UI/UX Design
SECONDARY BACKGROUND RESEARCH
To gain more in-depth knowledge of the design topic, I conducted quantitative & qualitative background research from of perspectives of ideal childhood music education, the benefits of music education, and the present situation of music education. Then I concluded insights from the results of my research, and leveraged them in the following design steps.
The Benefits of Music Education
Current Music Education
FACTS:
In US, 3.8 million preK-12 students have no access to music education and its benefits.
89% of teachers and 82% of parents rate music education highly as a source for greater student creativity.
WEAKNESSES:
Risks being outdated by technology
Too much music education does not reflect the reality of how young people engage with music.
Misses Cultural and social relevance
Current music education is not culturally responsive - they don’t teach music where kids are, and with what interests them.
Economic Pressure
Children less economically advantaged are being priced out of learning musical instruments
Research Insights
Ideal music education should benefit the young music learners in multiple aspects.
Most schools provides music-related classes, and people realize the importance of music study.
For various reasons, there are gaps between ideal childhood music education and the reality.
persona
exploratory literature review
With the design goals and personas in mind, I conducted an exploratory literature review, looking into music-related knowledge and basic elements. I organized the research results into the diagrams below:
IDEATION
I started to ideate from the design opportunities. To present my ideas visually in detail, I conducted design charrettes by sketching and demonstrating the concepts in the three following level: workflow, key interface design, and user interactions.
user-case scenarios
Scenario 1 - Children studying and compose in a music class
Scenario 2 - Children using the Test & Practice feature with parents
Scenario 3 - Children exploring in the community and play with friends
TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH
Object Recognition
Object recognition is a computer vision technique for identifying objects in images or videos.
It can be used in this project to recognize and differetiate tangible forms that childrens build.
Augmented Reality
AR is an interactive experience of real-world environments where the objects that reside in the real world are enhanced by computer-generated info.
It can be used to visualize different interation methods when children composing the music.
Sound Waveform Match
Sound Waveform matching is to compare a fixed reference signal of length samples with a continuous incoming signal.
It can be used to detect if the tangible shape matches the sound waveform.
Big Data
Big data is a field that treats ways to analyze, systematically extract info from, or otherwise deal with data sets that are too large or complex to be dealt with by traditional data-processing software.
It can be used to evaluate users’ selection according to the tangible shape-sonic-matching data base.
Machine Learning
Machine learning is the study of computer algorithms that can improve automatically through experience and by the use of data.
It can be used to enrich the product’s data base.
CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT
Interface Design (Mid-fidelity Wireflow)
Implementation Validation
To implement the design, two stages of backend technology will be needed as below:
High-fidelity prototype
I conducted a usability test with the mid-fidelity prototype and got 2 main feedback. After iteration, I got the final design.
Instead of solely face-to-face collaboration, better functionalize the online community and enable users to collaboratively compose music online using their shared components.
Add step indicators in the whole component setting process to provide more guidance to the users
The final design provides the users with a system including and an app and geomatrical wood blocks with magnets. With the geometrical blocks and app that powered by Augmented Reality and AIoT (Artificial Intelligence of Things) technologies, children can build “tangible sound” and learn music in a more interactive way.
Learn & Compose
In this section, users can build customized forms with the basic geomatrical blocks, and the the App will generate a sonic quality and interaction mode that suits the block best. Users can use the sonic quality to compose a piece of music with the augmented reality feature.
Quiz Mode
In Quiz Mode, children can practice the congruent relationship between tangible shapes and sonic qualities in 2 types of tests - Tangible to Sonic, and Sonic to Tangible.
Parents who are not professional in the music field can easily know the results of the childrens music study from the grades generated by the app. In this way, parents can have better idea of the quantified learning outcomes and pay more attention to music education.
Community
In the community, users can share the components and the composition they made. They can also save the components uploaded by others and use them in their own compositions. In this way, children will have better experience of online collaboration.
