Phonos Interactive Speaker
Traces of Use
Remember when we only had physical things? Even though your favourite pair of jeans would scratch and tear, you didn’t want to throw them out just yet... Phonos is an interactive speaker that grows with you, just like those jeans.
Based on the music you listen to; a photosensitive pattern appears on its surface. Phonos combines digital music with the age-old photographic printing process of cyanotype to develop an analog image of your audio. Want to capture this moment or do you just like the pattern you see? Take out your traces and rinse to make them permanent.
The Challenge
How can traces be used to design connected objects that grow, mature, and evolve with their users?
Connected objects
Connected objects, which are one part computational the other part physical, are an intriguing ground to examine how the physical and the digital should co-exist with one another. The connected object, in this case a music player, was given the ability to show traces of people that use it.
Prototypes
Before we ended up with the final music player, multiple prototypes have been build. Some of these prototypes were a direct analogy, others traced our interactions more indirectly. It was hard to find the right interaction for tracing a digital sound, combining both hard- and software design - after many messy and failed prototypes we finally ended up with Phonos.
Interactions
The different interactions with the speaker are illustrated on the right. These gestures are intentionally designed to be very physical and follow the form of the speaker.
Phonos
Course in the masters program of Design for Interaction at Delft University of Technology.
Course
Interactive Technology Design
Year
2015
Team
5 students
Responsibilities
• Creating Prototypes
• Desinging interactions with the mp3 player
• Programming the accelerometer