PROJECT STATEMENT

As there was no primary research undertaken for this project, there was no need for any ethical considerations for involving participants. However, if the app design was to become a real working app available for people to download, there were many to consider. The app is an iteration of a music streaming service, like most it would have the ability to play music. People who struggle with a hearing impairment will not be able to fully enjoy the music being played, however, the lumetri scopes provide visuals of the songs that are meant to reflect the sounds being played. The purpose of the projections was primarily to further the experience when listening to music and might actually help someone in this position that they would not usually find with a typical streaming service. 

Another ethical consideration that can be applied to this project is the monitoring of song suggestions. The app (if made into an actual product) would have an age restriction on it with proof of ID needed to make an account. The app is aimed at university students that range on average between 18-26 so, these are the people that will mainly be using the app. This same issue can occur with explicit songs, there is no way to monitor a persons input into the suggestion box and some songs may be offensive, so this is something that would need to be further investigated if it were to be developed. 

I found it difficult to decide on the areas I wanted to investigate for my Context of Practice project. I knew this year I wanted to try ideas that I had not been confident doing before and something that I was deeply interested in. Music has always been an influence on my work, even if it is just setting the tone whilst I am designing. This is what led to my essay question, as a user of streaming services and seeing a lack of design nowadays for music, I thought it would be interesting to explore the why and how this happened. A few of the articles I had read at the beginning (which are the ones spoken about on my theoretical research design board), gave me an idea of what contexts to look at and theoretical approach. I knew I wanted to use a chronological structure for the essay and with that, social, technological and historical context would be important factors within the essay. Especially, when using the phenomenological approach to analyse the audience’s experience with the design for music at the time.  Once this was all outlined and an essay plan was developed, the writing of the essay went really well. The topics were extremely interesting and made it easy to triangulate between texts. The only minor issue was that because the topics in the essay are very current, it meant that I could only find online sources that were completely up to date. I had started an in-depth timetable to make sure I balanced not just the essay and practical project but also the other module running. This was helpful in knowing what I needed to get done each day.

That leads me to the practical project, which did not go as smoothly as the essay had. At first, I found it very difficult to come up with a tangible idea and once I had got one, I had no idea how I would start designing for it. I have never used Adobe XD before and I have little experience with Adobe After Effects but, I was confident in the idea so tried to learn XD as quick as possible. The page designing was very much like designing on Adobe Illustrator but the animating side was quite complicated. It seems fairly explanatory however, the actions were often glitching when I tried to record the app working which meant I had to start over many times. This was also the reason I did not animate the buttons or transitions, I had tried but it ended up ruining all of the other actions I had applied. However, after I had gone over it several times, it finally started working properly. 

The next issue came with the projected lumetri scopes. In order to show them in a real-life setting, I needed to get a projector that would connect to my laptop or phone and be high enough quality that the scopes looked good when projected. At first, I was going to use one at university, however, the classrooms were far too bright and I would need an adapter to connect to them. I managed to order a mini projector from Amazon, but after taking a week to arrive, it was faulty and I had to send it back. I was worried that I would not be able to use them in my final design because they were the root of the idea and I would need to redesign the app so it was not purely based on lumetri’s appearance. However, I managed to order another, better quality, projector for next day delivery, this, unfortunately, did not turn up but I tried again and finally received a working machine. Another issue came straight after, I had begun isolating and would not be out till after the deadline which meant I could not take out a camera to video the projections. The camera on a smartphone is good but, not in the dark and ended up making my final projections look very poor quality.

The essay was the inspiration for the practical project. The apps aim is to get people out of the house to collect music similar to in the past when you would have to travel to the music shop for vinyl or a CD. This was a main focus for the practice because, in many of the articles examined for the essay, the authors speak of the nostalgia of waiting to buy the latest album from your favourite artists. In some texts, designers have spoken about how the time of the vinyl was the peak of the relationship between music and design, so this is how I wanted to incorporate that aspect. The lumetri visuals were inspired by the designers who are embracing the new digital dominant era and using it to create whole new means of designing for music such as; Polyfauna for Radiohead and Bjork’s digital installation. Using the phenomenological approach I analysed how to improve the audience’s experience by trying to create a setting, whether it be the walk to collect the music which could be effected by the weather or the excitement of finding a new song, to creating a personal space to enjoy the projections. The two sides to this project work well together and everything learnt within the essay was applied to the practical. Furthermore, experimenting with the lights and projections gave me more of an understanding of the experience I was creating by thinking about what makes this experience unique.