民乐 Reimagined

Multisensory Experience | Educational Technology | Live Audiovisual System

Collaborative Work with Daisy Chen, Jiaxin Yang, Ingrid Wang.

My Role: Experience Design Lead, Client Relations Manager

Timeline: October 2020 - December 2020 (6 weeks)

Project Client: Shanghai Chinese Orchestra 上海民族乐团

Made with: Hardware - Arduino, Projector; Software - Processing; Materials - CLantern, Dried Flowers.

| Opportunity

We were asked by our partner Shanghai Chinese Orchestra to create an experience that hopes to increase people’s interest in Chinese Traditional Music.

| Outcome

We conducted thorough research, brainstorming, and ideation. In the end, we prototyped one of our ideas and pitched it to our partner, which received their approval and lead to further collaboration and ongoing research.

Together with teammates, we researched theories of creative learning, engagement, and design-based research, especially related to web-based and mobile-based experiences and principles of creative making with new media. 民乐 Reimagined is a digital learning experience designed at the intersection of the arts, coding, and technology in collaboration with the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra as a partner.

Design Process

01. Problem Seeking

Extrinsic motivations override intrinsic motivations
Limited Chinese traditional music experience
High preference for learning Western music instruments

We started off our research by looking at the background of why traditional Chinese tends to decrease people’s attention. After conducting user questionnaires and literal research, we identify three key factors that are shown above to be the reason why people are losing interest. We then continue our research by reframing the problem.

02. Problem Reframing

How might we design an experience, which will help users to see Chinese traditional music from a new perspective?

03. The Solution

Creating a multi-sensory immersive experience of Traditional Chinese Music, where it uses Chinese traditional instruments to imitate the sounds of nature.

HOW DID WE GET THERE?

04. Design Model

The design model we used to guide us through this project is the “Experience Design Sequences” created by Nathan Shedroff in his book Experience Design (2001). It separates every experience into the components of “Attraction, Engagement, Conclusion”. Inspired by his model, we then redesigned an experience map that would suit our project the best.