Designing four Generations of ‘Musicking Tangibles’

In this article we present a novel approach for the understanding and the design of interactive health improving music technology, what we call Musicking Tangibles. The Musicking Tangibles approach represents an alternative approach to the traditional instrument, interface and switch-oriented music technology perspective. Our approach combines a humanistic, resource and empowerment oriented health approach with an aesthetic and culture based design approach towards music technology. We present four empowering and health improving qualities for the Musicking Tangibles. These qualities emphasize to:

1. Continually evoke interest and positive emotions relevant to diverse users’ interpretation of the tangibles and the situation,
2. Dynamically offer the users many roles to take, many musicking actions to make and many ways to express themselves,
3. Offer the users aesthetically consistent responses and build relevant cross-media expectations and challenges over time and space, consistent with their character,
4. Offer the users many relations to make: to people, things, experiences, events and places.

Further we present and argue for some design solutions of the Musicking Tangibles ORFI, WAVE, REFLECT, and the POLLY World from the RHYME-project. In developing POLLY we have tried to put together as many design qualities as possible, to exemplify our view and current understanding.