WorldBeat: Designing a Baton-Based Interface for an Interactive Music Exhibit

This paper presents the interface design of the WorldBeat system, an interactive exhibit about using computers in musical education, and as musical instruments. The system allows even computer and music novices to create aesthetically pleasing music, using a new, consistent interaction technique: Visitors control the complete exhibit using two infrared batons as pointing device, conductor’s baton, and musical instrument interface, making keyboard and mouse unnecessary. The paper summarizes special requirements when designing computer-based exhibits, how we used batons as a new type of input device to meet those requirements, and how user feedback iteratively optimized the look and feel of the exhibit to convey its “message” in an understandable and visually appealing way. We show how our results contribute to “Looking to the Future” of HCI, and how they could be of general use to other researchers and practitioners designing user interfaces for interactive exhibits. Keywords...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1997
• Where: CHI
• Authors: Jan O. Borchers
• Keywords: CHI 1997, Human Computer Interaction, Interactive Exhibit, Interface Design, Musical Instrument