Week 16 - User Testing #2
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After last week's results we were very exited to continue with our user test on various people and see the effects shared music has on people who have never met each other before.
This week we matched the participants playlists and chose to play them a 'First Aid Kit' song, based on their favourite artists and songs. The general atmosphere in the car was a bit awkward at first - they were not making eye contact most of the time and were looking mostly Forward and sideways. We realised that moments of silence creates bigger awkwardness. But as the song kept on playing we noticed that the interaction between our participants became more calm, less awkward and pleasant - They Talked about the song and the band, which brought up a common topic - Sweden (one of the participants is Swedish and the other participant likes the band which is from Sweden).
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Week 16 - User Testing #2
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After last week's results we were very exited to continue with our user test on various people and see the effects shared music has on people who have never met each other before.
This week we matched the participants playlists and chose to play them a 'First Aid Kit' song, based on their favourite artists and songs. The general atmosphere in the car was a bit awkward at first - they were not making eye contact most of the time and were looking mostly Forward and sideways. We realised that moments of silence creates bigger awkwardness. But as the song kept on playing we noticed that the interaction between our participants became more calm, less awkward and pleasant - They Talked about the song and the band, which brought up a common topic - Sweden (one of the participants is Swedish and the other participant likes the band which is from Sweden).
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Technical Progress
In the last few weeks our programmers worked hard (as seen in the first photo) to continue and develop Cooper's features.
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They worked on Cooper's playlist algorithm, Cooper's movements and a beat detector programme to match Cooper's movements to the music beat.
Mia and Barel working hard
Cooper first playlist
Cooper's algorithm uses Spotify API and search for common tracks -> artist -> genres between the driver and the passenger and then creates a playlist based on the finding. Cooper's first try was to match songs between Mia and Barel that have no common tracks or artist (Barel likes Taylor swift and Mia likes punk music) but they ended up having some common genres. On the right you can see the playlist Cooper created for them - his first playlist!
In order for Cooper to move with the music beat, we needed a program that analyse a song in real time and and captured it's beat so we can manipulate Cooper to move with the beat. In order to do that we used an Arduino board and a led light that will blink whenever the the program value is over a certain threshold that simulate the beat. We found an Arduino library that helps us out but there are still some improvements needed . In the video you can see our first try.
The last week we also worked with Annie our industrial designer / machine engineering student that helped us design our first draft of Coopers insides where it's motors should go. In our more updated design we added another motor on the bottom of Cooper's body.