Songbox
connections through music
CORE PRINCIPLES: PROGRAMMING | Spring 2017
Tools used: processing.js, Sketch, Adobe Creative Suite
SCAD is home to over 40 different majors, but people generally tend to not venture much outside of their major halls.
Encourage more interdisciplinary yet spontaneous mingling among SCAD students based on shared interests?
In my early exploration phase, I asked SCAD students a variety of questions including how they usually forge connections and what they thought of the idea of physically going to a location to complete a task.
Hypothesis
Common interests can be a strong catalyst for forging new connections. However, apps and services that simply match people based on what they like are oversaturated. Designing a product that encourages students to physically go to places with an interest-based goal in mind might foster new relationships in a more natural way.
The market for apps and services that simply group people together based on shared interests is oversaturated. Considering how extra layers of interaction (having to physically move to a location, for example) can possibly disrupt the standard model is an interesting way to think about how people might find design solutions to connecting people together. Thank you so much for taking the time to read through my process!
​
​
From my observation, students tend to group together based on their respective majors. I believe that as such a diverse school with students of different backgrounds, interests, and passions, encouraging interdisciplinary mingling is immensely important.
From these interviews, I decided to work off of music because it releases dopamine in the brain and most people share the common interest. I also wanted to consider the use of beacons from Estimote that would sense a user's phone distance proximity of the beacon, in order to further enhance the physical traveling aspect.
Junseo's main motivators are his drive to succeed in his studies while also meeting new people in America. Though he found a close circle of Korean international student friends at SCAD, he would like to branch out to find different kinds of people of many majors. His main needs are to find a way to meet new people in a natural way and share his guitar music.
How might we
Discover
Songbox is an app concept that allows students to “drop” songs into various music hubs scattered around campus in order to share music and connect with new people.
The Discover view would show a map with Songbox hub locations throughout campus. This would also the number of songs dropped into this hub and most recent song dropped.
Place Song
If the user approached a Songbox hub, they would have the ability to drop a song they liked into the hub.
Leaderboards
The leaderboards screen shows a list of the song "Droppers" who dropped the most songs that week, along with their profile including name, major, description, etc.
Most Recent Drop
Various Songboxes (mini jukeboxes) are located throughout campus at various halls (Montgomery Hall, Gulfstream, Adler, etc). Since SCAD is a very scattered campus with some halls ranging as much as 3 miles apart from each other, having Songbox distributed throughout our campus would encourage students to go out and explore the city of Savannah as well.
​
Each Songbox would be a beacon where users could "drop" a song from Spotify, Pandora, Youtube, etc. into. A song is dropped if a user comes within a 5 ft radius of the Songbox (almost like a dropbox for music, hence the name).
The Most Recent Song screen shows an audio visualization of the most recent song dropped at any Songbox, showing the person who dropped it and their major. This feature primarily was to introduce people to different types of music and potentially connect to new people if their music tastes were the same.
Process
"I feel like Pokemon GO! was successful because it made people actually go outside and have a goal in mind, rather than just sitting at home cocooning."
​
Aaron | 20 years old
"I really like the idea of kind of 'discovering' things by having to actually physically go somewhere. It's almost like I'm on a mission to complete tasks."
​
Elaine | 19 years old
"Most of my close friends I met through interest clubs. Of course, I have close friends that I have nothing in common with, but I would say that generally my friend group likes the same stuff."
​
Brandon | 18 years old
Persona
Visual Process
Takeaways