Workplace Rhythm
Description
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Design of a stress-free collaborative zone for the work place where people can come and go as they please. Each specific action that produces sound that can be added to the music collage of the company. The actions have to be done in a calm manner so as to not distort the sound quality of the space. It is meant to be a stress free zone that facilitates the concept of hygge.
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The Design Challenge
For this project we were challenged to make an environment or experience hygge, with using the Kinect 2.0.
Based on my preliminary research, hygge is a Danish word used "when acknowledging a feeling or moment, whether alone or with friends, at home or out, ordinary or extraordinary as cosy, charming or special." Further digging of the term hygge, I think is best explained through the view of a Danish person (p.68, Bean), Per, where he he mentions that its not about the space or materials in a space that is hygge; rather, it is the activities associated in that space that make it hygge. For example, a room by itself, with candles and cozy blankets is no doubt comfortable, but is it hygge? Gathering around your friends and playing music together makes it hygge. In particular, Bean's observation from Per's view of hygge: " The kitchen is hygge only when a couple friends chat in it; the table needs people to “have a nice meal,” the window ledge needs coffee or beer and cigarettes and friends" (p.69, Bean)
From this I gathered that hygge is an shared experience between you and people you are comfortable with. It is noted in Bean's paper that it is quite common to see the experience of hygge described as process of turning away from the outside world (p.25, Bean). I think hygge is a means to escape reality in some way.
Based on my preliminary research, hygge is a Danish word used "when acknowledging a feeling or moment, whether alone or with friends, at home or out, ordinary or extraordinary as cosy, charming or special." Further digging of the term hygge, I think is best explained through the view of a Danish person (p.68, Bean), Per, where he he mentions that its not about the space or materials in a space that is hygge; rather, it is the activities associated in that space that make it hygge. For example, a room by itself, with candles and cozy blankets is no doubt comfortable, but is it hygge? Gathering around your friends and playing music together makes it hygge. In particular, Bean's observation from Per's view of hygge: " The kitchen is hygge only when a couple friends chat in it; the table needs people to “have a nice meal,” the window ledge needs coffee or beer and cigarettes and friends" (p.69, Bean)
From this I gathered that hygge is an shared experience between you and people you are comfortable with. It is noted in Bean's paper that it is quite common to see the experience of hygge described as process of turning away from the outside world (p.25, Bean). I think hygge is a means to escape reality in some way.
The Problem
When I was on my internship, I noticed people will come in and out of their cubicles, sometimes without saying a word to anyone else. Other times everybody would be so busy that they wouldn't even have time to chat, and we realize we haven't seen each other in months despite the fact that we were on the same floor of the building. Sometimes you would catch people at a bad time.
I wondered if there was a better way to interact and form bonds with people without explicitly requesting for a team building exercise, or having money spent on a recreational room (usually these rooms have games where you can compete with coworkers; they're definitely fun but can be competitive). I wanted to create a calm unobtrusive atmosphere where people can come and go as they please, and feel like they are participating in a shared experience through music.
The Design Process
For this prompt, initial brainstorming sessions involved thinking about hygge-like contexts. I thought about birthday parties, I read that the everytime there was a special event, the Danish would place a Danish flag on that particular date in their calendar.
I felt like story telling was hygge because it almost seems family-centric; there's something about sharing a story with a group of people, creating that shared experience between the story-teller and the audience. It's a way to show values, morals and beliefs without explicitly telling people, and a powerful reinforcer of community. The Jam Session idea was inspired by Per, in Bean's paper, where he mentions that he identifies hygge as playing music together with his friends. Being a hobbyist of music myself (guitar and piano), I felt strongly about this idea. I also thought about other environments where hygge could be a challenge, such as a retail store or a workout session. Here are all my initial sketches: |
I started refining my initial ideas, on both jam session and story telling. I felt equally strong about both of these ideas, because I had clear motivations for doing them. However as I was refining my sketches, it became apparent that variations on the jam session idea was the better direction for me. This was simply because it was rather difficult to make the interaction of story telling non-sequential without losing the context of the story. Story telling most often follows a linear plot; if i would have gone the choose-your-own-story route it would mean a significant amount of time to implement the possible scenarios of what could end up happening within the story. If I consider my other variations on this, it would still require a good chunk of implementation time with only a slightly richer interaction based space.
Initial Sketches
Here are my initial refinement sketches pertaining to story-telling and jam sessions:
I revisited a concept that we had discussed in this class (CPSC 581). Usually physical proximity is a way to determine how close you are emotionally to that person, as denoted by the diagram to the right.
Through different variations, somewhere along the way I landed in a drum circle and pottery mashup context, where drumming would somehow form the clay on a screen in front of you. I liked the idea of making something together as a group, and the interaction was rich in that it was not sequential. I was also inspired by the idea of emergence, where something amazing can be made out of smaller entities. Some people I talked noted that participating in a drum circle and actively trying to making something together is hygge, and suggested to make it solely sound based as visualization of the clay on a screen takes away from the experience of focusing on each other. Additionally, a Danish source in the iLab disagreed that the concept of drum circles was hygge due to the possibly energetic nature of drumming. I continued to refine my sketches, finding possible ways to make drum circles hygge. Refinement Sketches |
Here are my refinement sketches pertaining stemming from the Jam Session idea:
Along the way, I also tried to make a workplace hygge by incorporating musical instruments instead of drumming sounds. However, this proved to be a challenge since you have to consider what notes work well together, where the notes would be in the space, what would happen when different people would be in the space and how that would affect the overall sound.
In my final revision, I decided to reduce my scope and focus on how to make the workplace hygge, and I incorporated different revisions into my final iteration. I moved away from my drum circle idea because I don't have too much knowledge of the space, and because I felt that there was not that much room to explore interactions on how to make the idea more hygge. Making it less energetic would take away from the fun of participating in the drum circle. The corporate workplace is a space I know well, and there's more room to make it hygge since people don't generally associate it as being hygge in the first place.
What encourages a user to walk into this space?
This place will be advertised within the company as a place of relaxation and calm. People will naturally be curious and will come in on their own time, usually by themselves or in groups or two. When you are far away from the center of the room, and you make a gesture that produces a sound, the quality of that sound has more of a reverb to it compared to when you are in the middle, so it's akin to the room calling you to come closer.
Scenario 1
A single person walks in, and can do four possible sounds, a triangle, bongo drum, wind chimes or tambourines. The person sees what existing music is done by other people and can choose to record their own different permutation of sounds. Afterwards, they can leave.
Scenario 2
Two people who are workplace friends walk in. Based on the proximity principle, the system highly encourages you to come with another person and play music, because hygge is enhanced when you do something calm and relaxing with someone you're comfortable with. The father you are away from the person, the more the sound quality will change - at a certain distance, it will become a bit distorted. They either choose to record or just play around, and leave whenever they want.
In my final revision, I decided to reduce my scope and focus on how to make the workplace hygge, and I incorporated different revisions into my final iteration. I moved away from my drum circle idea because I don't have too much knowledge of the space, and because I felt that there was not that much room to explore interactions on how to make the idea more hygge. Making it less energetic would take away from the fun of participating in the drum circle. The corporate workplace is a space I know well, and there's more room to make it hygge since people don't generally associate it as being hygge in the first place.
What encourages a user to walk into this space?
This place will be advertised within the company as a place of relaxation and calm. People will naturally be curious and will come in on their own time, usually by themselves or in groups or two. When you are far away from the center of the room, and you make a gesture that produces a sound, the quality of that sound has more of a reverb to it compared to when you are in the middle, so it's akin to the room calling you to come closer.
Scenario 1
A single person walks in, and can do four possible sounds, a triangle, bongo drum, wind chimes or tambourines. The person sees what existing music is done by other people and can choose to record their own different permutation of sounds. Afterwards, they can leave.
Scenario 2
Two people who are workplace friends walk in. Based on the proximity principle, the system highly encourages you to come with another person and play music, because hygge is enhanced when you do something calm and relaxing with someone you're comfortable with. The father you are away from the person, the more the sound quality will change - at a certain distance, it will become a bit distorted. They either choose to record or just play around, and leave whenever they want.
Why is it hygge, and why do you need the Kinect?
This is hygge because it is a shared experience between you and the people you are comfortable with, and is a relaxing activity you can do to de-stress. I feel that often times music is a way to escape reality, to momentarily forget our worries in life. When alone, sitting down and listening to what other people have created is a great way to become part of their experience and just sit in quiet reflection. I like to think of it as looking at pictures, seeing remnants of the past and appreciating the history of the space. With two people, the sound reflects the dynamics of their friendship. If they are good enough friends to come close together, they are greeted with a different set of sounds to play around with. The sounds that are chosen for this system were carefully picked to emit a charming or warm sound specifically for the hygge effect.
We need the Kinect in this system to track the user's position in the room, and produce a sound based on their location. We also need the Kinect to determine the user's proximity in relation to their friend, and give different sounds based on their distance away from each other.
This is hygge because it is a shared experience between you and the people you are comfortable with, and is a relaxing activity you can do to de-stress. I feel that often times music is a way to escape reality, to momentarily forget our worries in life. When alone, sitting down and listening to what other people have created is a great way to become part of their experience and just sit in quiet reflection. I like to think of it as looking at pictures, seeing remnants of the past and appreciating the history of the space. With two people, the sound reflects the dynamics of their friendship. If they are good enough friends to come close together, they are greeted with a different set of sounds to play around with. The sounds that are chosen for this system were carefully picked to emit a charming or warm sound specifically for the hygge effect.
We need the Kinect in this system to track the user's position in the room, and produce a sound based on their location. We also need the Kinect to determine the user's proximity in relation to their friend, and give different sounds based on their distance away from each other.
Implementation
I used Kinect 2.0 and Unity to implement my idea. Some modifications from my original idea are as follows:
- Instead of going near each other to change the sound, the pair will fist bump each other, to make it more deliberate.
- No distortion because it sounds REALLY BAD. Instead, the sounds will just sound "far away" from each other. This is done by manipulating the low pass cutoff frequency of the sound to be a low number.
- There were some challenges with the Kinect distinguishing different motions (pat air above head, pat air below chest). I changed it so that if your wrist passes a certain point, the system will make the sound.
- There are some limitations with the range of the Kinect. To accommodate, I made the echo quality of the sound (reverb) more abrupt and drastic with the limited range, to make it more obvious.
Final Thoughts
I thought this prompt was the trickiest out of all the projects. It was nice to have those constraints but at the same time it was challenging as well. In this project I learned the value of feedback, I kept discussing my ideas with my friends, family, co-workers, and instructors, and it was through their opinions about hygge and the interactions I had in my project that I started to form what eventually will be this the workplace rhythm project. That back and forth between differing opinions is so important because it allows for diversity of ideas, which in turn allows for interesting refinements.
Video
Code
Prerequisites
Steps to run executable
Steps to retrieve source code
Please take a look at this README for additional technical details.
- Have Unity 2017 installed on your machine.
- Have a Windows OS on your machine.
- Kinect 2.0 - have the hardware and install the Kinect 2.0 SDK
Steps to run executable
- Download this zip file, extract the file, and run the workplacerhythm.exe file with the Kinect plugged in.
Steps to retrieve source code
- Download this Unity package and drag it into the Unity Editor.
- From the Scenes folder, select Kinect+OpenCV3+NetworkIt scene and run.
Please take a look at this README for additional technical details.
Sources
This page:
Project Sounds:
- Hygge definition
- A typical workplace picture
- Recreational Room picture
- Danish flag
- Proximity Diagram
- Bean's paper
Project Sounds:
- Wind Chimes Sound (altered to the point of no return)
- Tambourine Sound