Artunes
Visual and auditory mediums of art, i.e. paintings, drawings, doodles, the written word, scribbles even, say something about us that can be subjectively interpreted. The same element is evoked when we hear our favorite music. How can people who enjoy art and music, find a means to connect the two?
Role: Designer
Team: Individual
Themes: Contextual Interviewing, Design Systems, Interaction Design
Timespan: 2 weeks
The Prompt
I was tasked with identifying a wellness activity and develop a design solution that enhances the efficacy, makes it easier to engage in or enhances it. I chose to go ahead with doodling, since I can directly empathize with people who doodle as it is an activity I engaged in ever since I was in school.
Contextual
Inquiry
I started looking for people around me that liked to doodle and asked them if I can watch them doodle and ask questions as they go about it. I interviewed 10 volunteers this way. Below are some quotes I noted while I was doing contextual inquiry.
Observations
Some of the key observations that greatly informed my design decisions are as follows:
1 People often doodled while they listened to music, or to regain their attention to a task like attending a lecture or listening to a podcast.
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2 The quality of the doodles differed greatly, some people called full-blown portraits "doodles" while others called a composition of rudimentary shapes "abstract art". Therefore, I decided to categorize the results of doodling as "art".
Design Requirements
After understanding the nature of the activity I am focusing on I came up with two design requirements that will guide my design solution.
1 Enhancing the interactability with doodles
Exploring avenues to do more with doodles than to draw them once and keep them, can expand the variety of uses doodling can have for people.
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2 Extending the experiences after doodling
Doodles often are not created with an end goal in mind, this recommendation suggests exploring further possibilities of modification and change with doodles that expands the possibility of a doodle not “ending”.
Design Solution
I decided to create a design solution that suggests music after scanning the artwork made by people.
Affordances
In addition to fulfilling the targeted design requirements. This solution also offers possibilities to people who do not doodle, paint or sketch to interact with art in a unique way.
Visual Language
The design language was intentionally dark and subdued, to give a classy vibe to the interface, inspired by the following moodboard.
Mock-ups
The following screens were designed to enable the complete interaction.
The user flows starts with allowing users different ways to send their artwork to the app.
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In addition to that there is a button for users to see their previously generated playlists.
Prototype
I shot a movie, depicting a user interacting with Artunes.
Reflection
This project was a lot of fun to do, especially because of the time constraints.
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In the first week of the project work I only interacted with several people while they were making art. This gave me inspiration for making the design not too flashy and with minimal interactions. The interactions that lie between art and music should be useful but not too overwhelming was my idea.
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The short timespan allowed me to convert my rough sketches into high fidelity mock-ups and prototype. If I had more time for user testing with low fidelity prototypes, I would have done that to see how the interaction can be further enhanced.