Teaching programming at a distance: the Internet software visualization laboratory

This paper describes recent developments in our approach to teaching computer programming in the context of a part-time Masters course taught at a distance. Within our course, students are sent a pack which contains integrated text, software and video course material, using a uniform graphical representation to tell a consistent story of how the programming language works. The students communicate with their tutors over the phone and through surface mail. Through our empirical studies and experience teaching the course we have identified four current problems: (i) students' difficulty mapping between the graphical representations used in the course and the programs to which they relate, (ii) the lack of a conversational context for tutor help provided over the telephone, (iii) helping students who due to their other commitments tend to study at 'unsociable' hours, and (iv) providing software for the constantly changing and expanding range of platforms and operating systems used by students. We hope to alleviate these problems through our Internet Software Visualization Laboratory (ISVL), which supports individual exploration, and both synchronous and asynchronous communication. As a single user, students are aided by the extra mappings provided between the graphical representations used in the course and their computer programs, overcoming the problems of the original notation. ISVL can also be used as a synchronous communication medium whereby one of the users (generally the tutor) can provide an annotated demonstration of a program and its execution, a far richer alternative to technical discussions over the telephone. Finally, ISVL can be used to support asynchronous communication, helping students who work at unsociable hours by allowing the tutor to prepare short educational movies for them to view when convenient. The ISVL environment runs on a conventional web browser and is therefore platform independent, has modest hardware and bandwidth requirements, and is easy to distribute and maintain. Our planned experiments with ISVL will allow us to investigate ways in which new technology can be most appropriately applied in the service of distance education

Pioneers, subcultures and cooperatives: The grassroots augmentation of urban places

About the book: There have been numerous possible scenarios depicted on the impact of the internet on urban spaces. Considering ubiquitous/pervasive computing, mobile, wireless connectivity and the acceptance of the Internet as a non extraordinary part of our everyday lives mean that physical urban space is augmented, and digital in itself. This poses new problems as well as opportunities to those who have to deal with it. This book explores the intersection and articulation of physical and digital environments and the ways they can extend and reshape a spirit of place. It considers this from three main perspectives: the implications for the public sphere and urban public or semi-public spaces; the implications for community regeneration and empowerment; and the dilemmas and challenges which the augmentation of space implies for urbanists. Grounded with international real -life case studies, this is an up-to-date, interdisciplinary and holistic overview of the relationships between cities, communities and high technologies

A Critical Analysis of Synthesizer User Interfaces for Timbre

In this paper, we review and analyse categories of user interface used in hardware and software electronic music synthesizers. Problems with the user specification and modification of timbre are discussed. Three principal types of user interface for controlling timbre are distinguished. A problem common to all three categories is identified: that the core language of each category has no well-defined mapping onto the task languages of subjective timbre categories as used by musicians

Exploration of applying a theory-based user classification model to inform personalised content-based image retrieval system design

© ACM, 2016. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published at http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2903636To better understand users and create more personalised search experiences, a number of user models have been developed, usually based on different theories or empirical data study. After developing the user models, it is important to effectively utilise them in the design, development and evaluation of search systems to improve users’ overall search experiences. However there is a lack of research has been done on the utilisation of the user models especially theory-based models, because of the challenges on the utilization methodologies when applying the model to different search systems. This paper explores and states how to apply an Information Foraging Theory (IFT) based user classification model called ISE to effectively identify user’s search characteristics and create user groups, based on an empirically-driven methodology for content-based image retrieval (CBIR) systems and how the preferences of different user types inform the personalized design of the CBIR systems

Choosers: The design and evaluation of a visual algorithmic music composition language for non-programmers

Algorithmic music composition involves specifying music in such a way that it is non-deterministic on playback, leading to music which has the potential to be different each time it is played. Current systems for algorithmic music composition typically require the user to have considerable programming skill and may require formal knowledge of music. However, much of the potential user population are music producers and musicians (some professional, but many amateur) with little or no programming experience and few formal musical skills. To investigate how this gap between tools and potential users might be better bridged we designed Choosers, a prototype algorithmic programming system centred around a new abstraction (of the same name) designed to allow non-programmers access to algorithmic music composition methods. Choosers provides a graphical notation that allows structural elements of key importance in algorithmic composition (such as sequencing, choice, multi-choice, weighting, looping and nesting) to be foregrounded in the notation in a way that is accessible to non-programmers. In order to test design assumptions a Wizard of Oz study was conducted in which seven pairs of undergraduate Music Technology students used Choosers to carry out a range of rudimentary algorithmic composition tasks. Feedback was gathered using the Programming Walkthrough method. All users were familiar with Digital Audio Workstations, and as a result they came with some relevant understanding, but also with some expectations that were not appropriate for algorithmic music work. Users were able to successfully make use of the mechanisms for choice, multi-choice, looping, and weighting after a brief training period. The ‘stop’ behaviour was not so easily understood and required additional input before users fully grasped it. Some users wanted an easier way to override algorithmic choices. These findings have been used to further refine the design of Choosers

Designing a Highly Expressive Algorithmic Music Composition System for Non-Programmers

Algorithmic composition systems allow for the partial or total automation of music composition by formal, computational means. Typical algorithmic composition systems generate nondeterministic music, meaning that multiple musical outcomes can result from the same algorithm - consequently the output is generally different each time the algorithm runs

Choosers: designing a highly expressive algorithmic music composition system for non-programmers

We present an algorithmic composition system designed to be accessible to those with minimal programming skills and little musical training, while at the same time allowing the manipulation of detailed musical structures more rapidly and more fluidly than would normally be possible for such a user group. These requirements led us to devise non- standard programming abstractions as the basis for a novel graphical music programming language in which a single basic element permits indeterminism, parallelism, choice, multi-choice, recursion, weighting and looping. The system has general musical expressivity, but for simplicity here we focus on manipulating samples. The musical abstractions behind the system have been implemented as a set of SuperCollider classes to enable end-user testing of the graphical programming language via a Wizard of Oz prototyping methodology. The system is currently being tested with undergraduate Music Technology students who are typically neither programmers, nor traditional musicians

Timbre space as synthesis space: towards a navigation based approach to timbre specification

Much research into timbre, its perception and classification over the last forty years has modelled timbre as an n-dimensional co-ordinate space or timbre space, whose axes are measurable acoustical quantities (variously, spectral density, simultaneity of partial onsets etc). Typically, these spaces have been constructed from data generated from similarity/dissimilarity listening tests, using multidimensional scaling (MDS) analysis techniques. Our current research is the computer assisted synthesis of new timbres using a timbre space search strategy, in which a previously constructed simple timbre space is used as a search space by an algorithm designed to synthesize desired new timbres steered by iterative user input. The success of such an algorithm clearly depends on establishing suitable mapping between its quantifiable features and its perceptual features. We therefore present here, firstly, some of the findings of a series of listening tests aimed at establishing the perceptual topography and granularity of a simple, predefined timbre space, and secondly, the results of preliminary tests of two search strategies designed to navigate this space. The behaviour of these strategies in a circumscribed space of this kind, together with the corresponding user experience is intended to provide a baseline to applications in a more complex space

Analysis of conceptual metaphors to improve music software: the role of prior experience in inclusive music interaction

An open challenge for interaction designers is to find ways of designing software solutions capable of enhancing the ability of users with differing levels of knowledge and capabilities to perform tasks that normally require specialised domain expertise. This challenge is particularly demanding in areas such as music analysis, where complex, abstract, domain-specific concepts and notations occur. One promising theoretical foundation for this work involves the identification of what are assumed to be conceptual metaphors and image schemas. These constructs are grounded in prior sensory-motor experiences of space, force, orientation and interactions with other bodies and are identified through analysing discourse. These theories have already been applied with some success both to musical concepts and, separately, to user interface design with the intention of creating more intuitive designs through exploiting these prior sensory-motor experiences. However, the present work appears to be the first to combine these hitherto distinct bodies of research. We hypothesise that if we can identify the conceptual metaphors and image schemas used by musical experts to structure their understanding of music, we can utilise this information to develop a general theoretical framework to aid designers in systematically improving their designs, providing a foundation for inclusive music interaction design and thus opening up software normally restricted to domain experts to a wider and more varied user population. A possible methodology for the development of such a framework is discussed along with details of a study to apply the conceptual metaphors and image schemas used by a small group of experienced musicians to an evaluation of Harmony Space