Designing the Sonic Blocks

This work gives an account of the design, development and deployment of the Sonic Blocks, with a small group of children in a primary school. The work gained an understanding of the blocks unique capabilities to enable physical and embodied interaction for exploratory and expressive sound making purposes. The findings include a comparison to conventional music making software on a personal computer and insights into the ability of the Sonic Blocks to mediate a collaborative music making activity with children. This work also gives a rigorous account of the design process used to create the Sonic Blocks, framed through a review of contemporary literature in the fields of tangible interaction, interaction design, perceptual psychology and constructivist learning. This work will be useful for researchers and students of Human Computer Interaction, Interaction Design, Ubiquitous Computing, Tangible and Physical Interaction and Learning with Technologies.

Autorentext

Frank G. Feltham M.Design (Ind. Des. Research) Frank is a lecturer in the Industrial Design program and researchmember of the Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL)at RMIT University. Frank lives in the Dandenong Ranges, near Melbourne Australia,with his young family and enjoys playing rhythm and blues guitar.

Klappentext

This work gives an account of the design, developmentand deployment of the Sonic Blocks, with a smallgroup of children in a primary school. The work gained an understanding of the blocks uniquecapabilities to enable physical and embodiedinteraction for exploratory and expressive soundmaking purposes.The findings include a comparison to conventionalmusic making software on a personal computer andinsights into the ability of the Sonic Blocks tomediate a collaborative music making activity withchildren. This work also gives a rigorous account ofthe design process used to create the Sonic Blocks,framed through a review of contemporary literature inthe fields of tangible interaction, interactiondesign, perceptual psychology and constructivistlearning.This work will be useful for researchers and studentsof Human Computer Interaction, Interaction Design,Ubiquitous Computing, Tangible and PhysicalInteraction and Learning with Technologies.