K Andrews Heather Birch Sam Maah

PracTrac: Encouraging and Tracking Independent Music Practice Rapid Participatory Design with Children Step 1: Understand Children’s Practicing Habits

Introduction Regular independent practice of music technique is critical for improving with any instrument. However, teachers regularly report that their students do not adequately practice piano, and students report that practicing technique is their least favourite part of music study.1

The goal of this project is to engage piano students as co-designers, with the aim of designing a mobile system that will make practicing piano technique engaging and fun.

Students made video recordings of a 15-minute piano practice session, and the design team watched the videos, taking notes about student habits, environment they practice in, and strategies for practicing.

Step 4: Lo-Fi Prototyping Sessions New ideas emerged. The app should: • track students as they practice • gamify student practice

Step 2: Determine Users’ Unmet Needs An initial online survey was used to gather information about students' felt needs, as well as piano teachers' felt needs. Identified needs: minimize the overwhelming feeling of having to practice so many technical exercises, distractions while practicing, difficulty with practicing.

Step 3: Idea Party!

Students identified difficulties with practicing the piano on index cards. Students created an avatar and assigned likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses concerning independent piano practice of scales and arpeggios.

Co-Designers

Step 5: Students Prototyping and Critiquing Using Fluid-ui.com, participants designed some screens. Participants looked at proposed names for the app, screens designed by their peers, and discussed positives and negatives, agreeing on one name and some essential screen features.

Girls aged 10-16, residents of Niagara Falls, Ontario

Current Stage

Students of a small piano studio operated by a team member

Familiar with mobile technology such as tablets or smartphones

Participatory Design with Children

We will be conducting further in situ design sessions and group discussions to refine design.

Using materials such as clay, beads, pipe cleaners and lego, students crafted design solutions to help their avatar practice the piano effectively.

We will continue implementing data from student prototypes into interactive mobile prototype, and continuing the iterative design process based on feedback.

Our design team synthesized the concepts represented in the students’ design session.

References

Children are often involved as users and testers, but are less likely to be involved in the actual design of a product. Druin found that with careful facilitation, children can be valuable as design informants or even as full design partners. 2 When designing with a group of children, researchers must be careful to account for differences in age, cognitive and social ability, and life experience. 3 Techniques that have been successfully used in exploring design with children include role playing, crafting, brainstorming, discussion, and fictional narrative. 4 The research strongly suggests that children are capable of contributing invaluable insights into design, and that participatory design techniques elicit these in ways that simple usability testing cannot.

KMDI 2001 Human Centred Design - Fall 2013

[1] McCormick, J. & McPherson, G. (2006). Self-efficacy and music performance. Psychology of Music, 34(3), 322-336.

The design solutions should: •  react to the students' piano practice •  interact with students as they practice •  guide the students as they practice

[2] Druin, Allison. (2002). The role of children in the design of new technology. Behaviour and information technology, 21(1), 1-25. [3] Ruland, C. M., Starren, J., & Vatne, T. M. (2008). Participatory design with children in the development of a support system for patient-centered care in pediatric oncology. Journal of biomedical informatics. 41(4), 624-635. [4] Read, J. C., Gregory, P., Macfarlane, S. J., et al. (2002). An investigation of participatory design with children-informant, balanced and facilitated design. Interaction Design and Children, 53-64.

Instructor: Prof. Andrew Clement TA: Terry Costantino Faculty of Information, University of Toronto