For the final project in a class on Tangible User Interfaces, my partner Chelsey Tanaka and I were interested in looking at ways to reinvent the mixtape for the digital age. Something about sharing digital playlists just isn’t the same as making and receiving a mixtape. A digital playlist can’t be decorated and the time implied in making it gives it emotionally significance. After many different designs, we came up with the wearable mixtape that took the form of a hoodie sweatshirt with headphones embedded into the hood. To play songs, a person attaches music buttons onto the hoodie. Each button is decorated with some image and maps to a unique song. Why buttons you ask? Well, buttons are small cheap and portable. They also call back to a punk rock aesthetic, only now, when someone has a Black Flag button on their jacket, it actually has the ability to play a Black Flag track.
The animation above shows the process of listening to a playlist. To listen to a playlist you would put on the hoodie. With the hood down, you would push each music button to program in the order you want the songs to play in. Blue lights illuminate the button when you push it. When you flip the hood up, the songs begin to play back in the order you programmed them. A blue light illuminates the button that is currently playing. There is also a blue light on your back to show others that you are currently listening to music. Adjusting the zipper up and down controls the volume of the playback.
This image shows one of the uses for this prototype as a way to gift music between friends. It involves one person who has blank music buttons. They can record a song onto the button and decorate the button to their hearts content. They toss the buttons they made in a package and ship them to a friend. The friend who gets them is able to put them on his or her hoodie and play them back. Not only does this add a tangible music experience, but it also adds an element of discovery as one person sends personalized gift to another.
Other scenarios for use involve the trading of buttons between people in a way that digital playlists don’t allow. Lets say I’m walking down the street and so are you. We run into each other and we’re both wearing our music hoodies. I’m curious about the band you are listening to and you are interested in mine. We trade buttons to swap tracks and continue on our way.
This image shows the materials and wiring used to implement the prototype. Each button has a unique resistor which lets the computer know which song to play.
Some people trying on the hoodie at the Tangible User Interfaces class demo session.