Soundscape: Participatory Design of an Interface for Musical Expression

The design of New Musical Interfaces (NMIs) has been informed by principles and methods core to Human-computer Interaction. Largely, the field of NMIs remains focused on usability as it evaluates and designs interfaces. Both fields, however, recognize but still wrestle with the need to adopt a more humanistic approach to both design and evaluation. In this project a design process informed by participatory design principles was followed. Through the discussions and evaluations within that process, the details of musicians' needs and values emerged indicating a need to step beyond usability. Soundscape, the resulting NMI, has value as a physical embodiment of the range of needs and values of those musicians in its design as an interface to support creativity. Further, it is hoped that through demonstration to the NMI design community critical discourse around humanistic design considerations will be supported.