Team
Aaditya Vaze, Ellie Huang
Timeline
Feb 2022
My role
Design Researcher and Software Engineer
Overview
For this project, we are exploring alternative forms of control connecting to digital keyboards. Drawing from our own experience, we initially identified two main pain points during the interaction process: 1. users need to flip music notes which makes the act of play less smooth; 2. users need to press on one foot to initiate actions of the sustain pedal, which takes more time to be trained comparing to just utilizing the upper body.
In order to sense signals in the most efficient way, we incorporated Muse headband – a wearable brain sensing headband that measures brain activity via 4 eletroencephalography (EEG) sensors. For project Musec, we used EEG sensors for blink detection, as well as accelerometer to sense head position – tilting towards either left or right.
Users are able to control the pedal with actions of blinking (noding in another version) and flip pages left or right via the actions of head tilting. Musec strives to incorporate beginning learners, piano practitioners, and marginalized community of disabled people as target audiences that they could potentially benefit from the new ways of interaction.
