The C60 Concept
In April of 2009 my colleagues Martin Bone and Kara Johnson published a collection of 12 design experiments in the book “I Miss My Pencil”.
Experiment #11, C60, examines the experience of listening to music. In addition to listening, we used to see and touch our music. Now we download, point and click.
Gone are the hours spent in the record store on a Saturday, leafing through the racks in search of that hidden gem. Replaced with sitting in front of your computer in your underpants… trolling through the iTunes store…
-Martin Bone, “I Miss My Pencil”
The C60 concept was created to bring tangibility to the digital music experience. A card represents a song or a collection of songs. Placement of a card on the C60 table causes the music represented by the card to be played. Multiple cards placed on the table form a clockwise ordered playlist.
An earlier “quick and dirty” prototype and process details after the jump:
C60 Prototype Development
In the spring of 2009, IDEO Boston designers began to gather into “craft” groups one lunch hour every week. Craft groups were created to encourage and inspire independent projects and design conversations; to deepen design craft. My craft group is focused on interaction and digital design. Interaction designer Dan DeRuntz, familiar with “I Miss My Pencil” suggested that we experiment with the C60 concept.
During concept development, it’s easy to spend too much time working on details that “don’t matter now”. It is preferable to test many ideas, to perform experiments that answer pressing questions and uncover new ones. In this phase, the best path to understanding is to try many ideas quickly.
Various approaches to C60 were considered, two were prototyped.
A turntable based approach, conceived and built by designer Konrad Ropke, utilized a cardboard box, a motor, an RFID module, Arduino based components and Adobe Flash, taking less than a week to build. This approach is demonstrated in the following video.
I prototyped a second approach, using 9 RFID antennas in a 3×3 matrix, also built in under a week, using a cardboard box, RFID modules, Arduino processors and the Processing software development tool. The prototype continued to be used for further experimentation and learning. For more photos and details of prototype development leading to the present C60 experience prototype hop on over to imissmypencil.com.
While both approaches showed promise, the craft group decided to move forward with the original C60 concept found in the book. The use of quick prototyping methods created confidence that we could make it work.
Scott
17/01/2011 at 12:27 pm // PermalinkIt seems that the major flaw with this design is that you need to attach the C60 to a separate computer and sound system. What if a speaker and battery pack were integrated into the C60? The sound quality might not be great, but it would be portable and remove a major inconvenience. If I had to hook up the C60 to a computer, I might as well just choose tracks on the computer, as I would with iTunes or Pandora. Also, as far as I understand the concept, the music is stored on the computer and the cards just determine what is played. Why not store the music on the cards? This would be an alternative way of selling music in stores, and you could even sell blank cards onto which one could download tracks from the Internet. It would further make the system more portable and convenient than the current model. Right now, it just seems to be another input device for a computer.
Bob Hartmann
18/01/2011 at 1:15 pm // PermalinkHello Scott,
Thanks for your feedback.
At this point in the process we decided not to embed the computer inside for the following 3 reasons:
1) With an external computer, we can take advantage of rapid software prototyping tools available on the PC and Mac.
2) We wanted to develop ideas quickly. An external computer reduces development complexity and allows for experimentation.
3) An embedded computer/music player and other features such as WiFi connection may be added at a later time if desired.
This project is presently a flexible experiment intended to demonstrate an approach to making music tangible again. It is open to further development.
For further information see:
http://imissmypencil.com/#/crafts/23
Thanks again for your feedback!
Carley
24/01/2011 at 6:06 am // PermalinkI’m in love with the kinesthetics of the record/record-player and dislike the ease of digital music so much… Records can still be found in goodwill stores, antique stores, yard sales, flea markets, etc. Record players, too, and on ebay, amazon.com, and other places. They may be done being manufactured, but they haven’t dropped off the face of the planet. Thank God! I’m in love with my record-player. Starting the turn-table, placing a record on, dropping the needle, the static, not being able to skip forward or shuffle, it actually raises the value of each song immensely.
Sorry, but digital music has devalued music. It was inevitable.
José
29/03/2011 at 6:14 pm // PermalinkYou need a tweet button on this post!
Milos
26/09/2011 at 5:02 am // Permalinktry to search ‘reactable’ on youtube
Meredith
13/01/2012 at 9:33 am // PermalinkThis is a great conversation piece. I could see these music cards being traded like baseball cards, even putting an entire album on one card. It’d be great to do this with DVDs and audio books: watching movies or listening to a favorite book simply by tossing a card on the platform. It could also work for video presentations in which the presenter wants to quickly and easily alternate between images and/or sounds.