This assignment took us away from game design. We had to design an interactive element for a live music performance. I was paired with Sophie and Nuray, be sure to read their take on the assignment too!

The music genre that was assigned to us was hip-hop. This is not a genre I have a lot of interest in, but I thought it was fun to experience something new. The scenario we came up with was a rap battle in which the audience decides who wins, based on their physical activity. The video sketch is over on Sophie’s blog, due to some Google Doc weirdness I currently don’t have access to it.

What I like about our design is its simplicity, I can’t think of anything that could be cut. Its also somewhat flexible in the way it gives feedback to the audience: It has a single value of activity that can be hooked up to the audio, the visualizations, the lights or a lot of other things. Additionally, it seamlessly integrates with the way these contests already happen: The audience was planning to move and dance anyways, the system just adds feedback.

Reflecting the design process

The assignment requires us to reflect on the design process. For that purpose, we had to answer a few questions. Here we go!

Describe the Design Session using the LiveMAP cards!

When we sat down to design, we first established the setting. We knew we had to tailor the interactive performance to hip hop music, and began throwing some ideas around. It could be a home party, a rap battle, a performance focused on a dancing audience, and so on. Then we drew our first set of cards, which were these:

• 5 (Role

  Manager) and 25 (Interaction

  spatial movement)

• 1 (Role

  Performer) and 18 (Influence

  conceptual characteristics of music)

• 2 (Role

  Spectator) and 12 (Motivation

  issues that constrain the actual execution)

At first, we didn’t really know what to do with the cards. Some of the combinations seemed a bit confusing, like the manager thinking about spatial movement. Wo took some time to discuss the cards and gradually, an idea emerged. While the cards led us to explore some additional design space, I’m not sure wether they actually led us to the winning idea. If I recall correctly, the concept we ended up using was discovered when we were discussing without referring to the cards.

However, the cards were useful when filling out details and discovering things about the design that were not apparent at first glance. While the idea of a rap battle was introduced without help of the cards, the voting mechanism was thought of because of the “spatial movement” card. The idea was to allow voting by moving inside the room. This was later deemed to be unpractical and changed to a accelerometer based mechanic. When we felt that the potential of the cards was exhausted, we drew another set. These were:

• 6 (Role

  Creator) and 8 (Motivation

  include someone for artistic reasons)

• 4 (Role

  Composer) and 13 (Influence

  temporal characteristics of the music)

• 1 (Role

  Performer) and 29 (Interaction

  chronological order)

This time, we consciously excluded the “manager” card because we didn’t really know how to interpret it in the last round. We tried to incorporate the cards into the design, but it did not work all that well. The combinations didn’t really fit into our concept. For example, we decided that changing the tempo of the music was not really feasible in a rap battle because that would make it too difficult for the singers. Nevertheless, we arrived at a satisfying concept.

When and how where the cards helpful?

I think the cards were at their most helpful in the process of fleshing out an already existing idea. The random roles and considerations help to shine a light on many different aspects of the design. This helps to address problems that are not immediately obvious as well as finding interesting details that could be expanded upon.

When and why where the cards less helpful or even limiting?

The cards were less helpful when trying to come up with a new idea. While they help exploring additional design space, I had the feeling that the very focused viewpoint a set of cards entails limits the ability to gauge an ideas usefulness. A satisfying design should be interesting for all involved parties, not just the ones that are included in the randomly drawn subset.

Also, the cards seem to require some musical knowledge in order to be useful. As a long time piano player I have an idea about what aspects of the music can be influenced and in which way. Without this knowledge, I think it would have been hard to interpret cards like “influence the conceptual characteristics of the music”.This could, however, be intentional as the cards are of course specifically designed to assist in the creation of interactive music performances.

Which ambiguities did arise in regards to the cards?

As I said above, a lot of ambiguities arose from the fact that we had little knowledge of music production and theory. The “manager” card was basically useless because we had no idea what a manager actually does in creating the performance. Likewise, the “influence” cards were difficult to use if the appropriate musical knowledge was missing.

What else did you notice?

The cards are good at making you see a design with other people’s eyes. However, they never make you question your social background: As a white, able-bodied man I can imagine myself as a white, able-bodied man whatever role I get. I think cards like these would be a good way to better consider the view of marginalized groups. Women may have safety concerns in a crowded, active audience while deaf people probably experience the performance in a wholly different way. Especially in a field as lacking in diversity as computer science and game design, these are important considerations.