The prototype I plan to produce will be an interactive ‘music room’ for pre teen children in the form of a touch screen table (explained later). Families with children often spend considerable time in ‘waiting areas’ where the children become bored, restless and disruptive. I was recently at an airport where children were running around all over the place, and some getting lost, because there was little for them to do, a couple of arcade games, but nothing really to stimulate or encourage them. So I will be using airports as the primary scenario for my prototype. Of course it could also be used in other waiting areas, crèches, anywhere that keeps children amused in busy places.

The choice of doing a music room came from watching my young cousins over Christmas loving to make noise on their wooden instruments, so I thought why not make this interactive. In turn it would be a lot safer in terms of misuse of objects, and children will be able to learn in a fun and encouraging way when the real instruments are not available to them.

Briefly, what I am aiming to do is to graphically create a music room in which there will be interactive instruments such as keyboard, drums, xylophone, guitar etc around the room (which will be bright, cartoony) and the children will be able to navigate around the room and tap the screen as to which instrument they wish to play on. Simple interaction on the touch screen will be used such as pointing, clicking, tapping, and dragging. Because of the computer generation and novelty factor, children (hopefully) will find playing instruments through a computer exciting.

For example, if the child wanted to play the keyboard, by touching where the keyboard is situated in the ‘room’ it will dominate the screen and become interactive when the child touches the keys which will then initiate the correct sound for that note. There is a similar idea to this here, however it does not allow the child to play chords themselves as they can only click one note at a time, whereas with the touch screen they can tap as many as they like at a time. I also think that children will benefit more from the experience by touching the screen to initiate the music, and pressing more than one key at a time.

The idea is that are able to create their own music and experiment with sound interactively, culturally learning, and keeping them amused. Here are some influential music methods of learning that I could incorporate in my prototype.

Virtual Drums

Online Music Room (quite like this one)

Virtual Guitar and other instruments

Ergonomically, the design of the table that the touch screen will be on will have to be child friendly. I have not managed to find any touch screen devices for children other than kiosks, and for practicality I want the child to be able to sit down to play the instruments. For the touch screen computer to be easily accessed, I want to make an all in one seating and table mechanism where the child can sit at a slightly slanted table top surface to easily play with all the instruments. The touch screen will be integrated into the slanted table.

I’ll also have headphones fitted because the application will be quite noisy, especially if there are loads of children on them at once.

Children seem to be facinated and like being able to touch and move things around, even if it’s just a shape or two…