Mutual engagement and collocation with shared representations

In this paper we explore the use of shared representations to support creative activities, focussing on collaborative music making. We examine the effect that user interface features of shared representations have on mutual engagement and show that providing shared awareness mechanisms increases mutual engagement. In particular, we show through an empirical study of 78 participants that providing cues to identity and shared pointers increases mutual engagement between participants, but together these features can overwhelm users. We also demonstrate that support for free-form annotation and spatial interaction with shared representations mediates interaction and helps participants to manage their collaborative activity effectively. In this paper we develop several measures mutual engagement and demonstrate their use to assess the design of shared representations. A key contribution of this paper is the development of a measure of collocation of participant interaction which indicates mutual engagement. The findings of the study have implications beyond the domain of collaborative music making and we outline some design guidelines for mutually engaging shared representations

Mutual Engagement in Social Music Making

Mutual engagement occurs when people creatively spark together. In this paper we suggest that mutual engagement is key to creating new forms of multi-user social music systems which will capture the public’s heart and imagination. We propose a number of design features which support mutual engagement, and a set of techniques for evaluating mutual engagement by examining the minutiae of inter-person communication. We illustrate these techniques through their use in empirical studies, and their use as part of artistic practice to design and evaluate new forms of collaborative music making

Accessible Spectrum Analyser

Presented at the 22nd International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD-2016)This paper presents the Accessible Spectrum Analyser (ASA) developed as part of the DePic project (Design Patterns for Inclusive collaboration) at Queen Mary University of London. The ASA uses sonification to provide an accessible representation of frequency spectra to visually impaired audio engineers. The software is free and open source and is distributed as a VST plug-in under OSX and Windows. The aim of reporting this work at the ICAD 2016 conference is to solicit feedback about the design of the present tool and its more generalized counterpart, as well as to invite ideas for other possible applications where it is thought that auditory spectral analysis may be useful, for example in situations where line of sight is not always possible

A Guide to Evaluating the Experience of Media and Arts Technology

Evaluation is essential to understanding the value that digital creativity brings to people's experience, for example in terms of their enjoyment, creativity, and engagement. There is a substantial body of research on how to design and evaluate interactive arts and digital creativity applications. There is also extensive Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) literature on how to evaluate user interfaces and user experiences. However, it can be difficult for artists, practitioners, and researchers to navigate such a broad and disparate collection of materials when considering how to evaluate technology they create that is at the intersection of art and interaction. This chapter provides a guide to designing robust user studies of creative applications at the intersection of art, technology and interaction, which we refer to as Media and Arts Technology (MAT). We break MAT studies down into two main kinds: proof-of-concept and comparative studies. As MAT studies are exploratory in nature, their evaluation requires the collection and analysis of both qualitative data such as free text questionnaire responses, interviews, and observations, and also quantitative data such as questionnaires, number of interactions, and length of time spent interacting. This chapter draws on over 15 years of experience of designing and evaluating novel interactive systems to provide a concrete template on how to structure a study to evaluate MATs that is both rigorous and repeatable, and how to report study results that are publishable and accessible to a wide readership in art and science communities alike.Comment: Preprint. Chapter to appear in "Creating Digitally. Shifting Boundaries: Arts and Technologies - Contemporary Applications and Concepts", Anthony L. Brooks (Editor), Springer. https://link.springer.com/book/978303131359

Annotating Distributed Scores for Mutual Engagement in Daisyphone and Beyond

Written and drawn annotations of musical scores form a core part of the music composition process for both individuals and groups. This paper reflects on the annotations made in new forms of distributed music making where the score and its annotations are shared across the web. Four kinds of annotation are identified from eight years of studies of mutual engagement through distributed music making systems. It is suggested that new forms of web based music making might benefit from shared and persistent graphical annotation mechanisms