Co-design of a Smart Cajón
Luca Turchet, Andrew McPherson, Mathieu Barthet · Journal of the Audio Engineering Society · 2018
Smart Instruments are a novel family of musical instruments that embed sensors, actuators, wireless connectivity, and semantic audio technologies.This paper reports the findings of a participatory design approach to develop a Smart Cajón, a box-shaped percussion instrument with Internet of Musical Things components.Five initial co-design sessions were conducted with different professional cajón player participants.The players were invited to devise tangible mock-ups by placing provided sensors on an acoustic cajón, and to express desirable use cases and interactions.We then designed and implemented a prototype satisfying performers' common requirements.The prototype was assessed using the concurrent think-aloud protocol.On overall, the smart qualities of the prototype and their potential received positive feedback, and areas of improvements related to expressive control and personalization were highlighted.