Emailing developers

I wanted to look into what makes app's the most engaging via features/interfacing.
I emailed the developers of the apps I thought were the best of what I tested as I figured these practitioners would know the most important traits to have in a engaging app. I phrased the question:

When making an app what do you think are the 3 most important aspects that create an engaging experience for the user?

I used this question as it would box there answer into a frame work were it would be easiest to compare their answers. I messaged 4 people the creators of: Way to Go, Inspirit, Bloom and Patatap. I got 3 responses these are the simplified versions of them:

Vincent Morisset -> Way to Go

- A great story and / or universe. It’s all about generating emotions.

- It needs pacing, surprises. How you work with time is crucial.

- A meaningful and rich interactivity where we create a visceral connection between the spectator/user and the piece. 

Peter Chilvers -> Bloom

-as little” interface" as possible. Ideally, the user should be able to discover an app’s features through exploration alone,

-I think another major factor is to limit the options to only the ones the user really needs

-Perhaps the most important aspect of Bloom’s appeal is that it hit a sweet spot where the user’s input was balanced with the artists’.

Jono Brandel -> Patatap , caroline

I would say the 3 most important things I was considering are that it be: inviting, easy, and playful. 

These were really interesting answers and they all made sense considering were they came from.

What I took from these responses is the importance of how the audience interact with my app which will come down to the UI design. It is far too easy to spoon feed the user how the app works which would take away all the intrigue. From this I plan to only instruct the very basics about how to use the app then letting the audience work the rest out for themselves. I was wrestling with the idea of including character but Vincent's thoughts on it and also the results of my second app test proved to show that the use of character and loose "narrative really helps users engage with the app its self. The feedback from these three practitioners did not come at a huge surprise but has definitely highlighted key features when it comes to my UI and content design.

App test v 2.0

After receiving feedback from the previous test I did I went about doing another one. From feedback I got I new I needed to make the videos fit together better and add some kind of character/setting element.

I started by creating a short piece of music that could be split into 4 sections, I spent a while experimenting with chord progressions and different sounds until I created something enjoyable. This was mostly to test whether I am able to create the music for the app or whether I need to bring in a musician to help out. I think bringing someone else to the project would be beneficial so long as they can create work that fits with the ethos of the project.

I then thought about how separate components sounded and also how they sounded as one piece to then create the animations. The animations needed to function as singular entities but also work well together as one piece in any order.

I did some quick character design (something simple) based on the keyboard tone, then worked out the next animations for the other 3 sounds accordingly.


I tested the app on a small group of people creatives and non. The testing was not done in any kind of formal manor I just wanted to see if people enjoyed what I had made. The feedback on the second test was much better on the first people seemed to engage with the app a lot more and a few cases of people really experimenting with creating different sounds using the layering system (which is exactly what I wanted).

After this test I feel confident in what I'm planning on making and now need to work out the logistics of making the final app and then start designing from there.

Here are all the test clips out sounds put into one video:

App catagorisation

I wanted to get more in-depth look on what makes apps enjoyable and have that "sticky" factor. The best way of organising all the apps I testing which I thought were effective was to categorise them. I created an excel document stating lots of different traits each app can have including interface difference and types of interactivity.

I put down a long list of apps I enjoyed but also rated them if I would play them again which is a defining factor for me. I tried a very wide variety of apps outside the ones I selected mostly using: Chrome experiments, android experiments, onepagelove, app.itize.us and from other websites.

Out of the 15 apps I tested I found that 6 had that sticky factor where I wanted to go back and play with them again, which were marked one the end of the spread sheet. What was apparent to me was all the "successful" apps had higher levels of interactivity but also the interactivity felt very "mechanical", which is that you feel like your interactions have a very direct affect in the app. 

researching apps

After taking a new direction for my project, I started looking into interactive media. Looking at apps in general rather than games I got a wider range of content to look at many of which didn't have I direct "goal" to them.

I looked into Chrome Experiments as a starting point but this ended as the biggest body of research into interactive media. Chrome Experiments has thousands of app experiments ranging from interactive A/V to games.

I found a few different examples that related to what I want to do and some stuck out from other both for positive reasons.

What I found with a lot of the A/V based apps which is what I was focusing on was that the ones that relied on just looking nice got dull very quickly they did not "stick"

There was quite a variety

of these some examples where interesting:

One was the resonance box which allowed you to change how the box reacted to the track player however I thought the interaction did not feel mechanical enough.

I saw a few examples that were similar to the idea of YUME which allowed users to interact a little with the image which intern triggered sounds. I felt these worked better as they had a little more setting to them which sparked more intrigue into the subtext of the project. The music element however I felt to be lacking in these and again the interaction seemed minimal

Inspirit was the next step up for me in terms of interaction and engagement. You direct a simplistic character around a fixed 360 camera making it pick up shapes to trigger sounds. I was engaged for considerably longer with this app as the character and setting added a lot more interest, however again the level of interaction became stale as I felt like I was very much just following very basic steps. More freedom would have excelled this app further in my opinion.

By far the best app that I tried was called Way to Go. At this point into researching I had ascertained that adding some form of character or narrative would be essential to create an interactive piece of media that was instantly forgettable. 

A way to go was a brilliant blend of 360 live action and traditional animation. It also incorporated interactive sections both with sound and film. The visual aspect was half of the success of this app it was the level of interaction the user was given and also the intrigue generated from the apps narrative.

What I learnt the most from reviewing this selection was that user interfaces are really important for engagement. A lot of the less successful apps had interfaces that either felt clunky or that you had little control over the app, this often made the experience far less interesting. The interface doesn't need to be complex and it doesn't need to give you lots of freedom it just needs to feel like you're are in control.

researching apps

After taking a new direction for my project, I started looking into interactive media. Looking at apps in general rather than games I got a wider range of content to look at many of which didn't have I direct "goal" to them.

I looked into Chrome Experiments as a starting point but this ended as the biggest body of research into interactive media. Chrome Experiments has thousands of app experiments ranging from interactive A/V to games.

I found a few different examples that related to what I want to do and some stuck out from other both for positive reasons.

What I found with a lot of the A/V based apps which is what I was focusing on was that the ones that relied on just looking nice got dull very quickly they did not "stick"

There was quite a variety

of these some examples where interesting:

One was the resonance box which allowed you to change how the box reacted to the track player however I thought the interaction did not feel mechanical enough.

I saw a few examples that were similar to the idea of YUME which allowed users to interact a little with the image which intern triggered sounds. I felt these worked better as they had a little more setting to them which sparked more intrigue into the subtext of the project. The music element however I felt to be lacking in these and again the interaction seemed minimal

Inspirit was the next step up for me in terms of interaction and engagement. You direct a simplistic character around a fixed 360 camera making it pick up shapes to trigger sounds. I was engaged for considerably longer with this app as the character and setting added a lot more interest, however again the level of interaction became stale as I felt like I was very much just following very basic steps. More freedom would have excelled this app further in my opinion.

By far the best app that I tried was called Way to Go. At this point into researching I had ascertained that adding some form of character or narrative would be essential to create an interactive piece of media that was instantly forgettable. 

A way to go was a brilliant blend of 360 live action and traditional animation. It also incorporated interactive sections both with sound and film. The visual aspect was half of the success of this app it was the level of interaction the user was given and also the intrigue generated from the apps narrative.

What I learnt the most from reviewing this selection was that user interfaces are really important for engagement. A lot of the less successful apps had interfaces that either felt clunky or that you had little control over the app, this often made the experience far less interesting. The interface doesn't need to be complex and it doesn't need to give you lots of freedom it just needs to feel like you're are in control.

presentation ("summer work")

For my presentation I demonstrated the "app" test I'd created and the ethos behind the project. The main point of this for me was to see how people felt about interacting with something like this. This was the first time I'd created something like this so I did not know how other people would feel about it. The feedback was very positive, even though I didn't have a proper interface it was very easy to use which is an important step. I found that a couple of people who tried did instantly get bored of playing with it they continued to explore how it works and what combinations of sounds they could layer up. This was exactly what I envisioned for the project and reassuring that I have the potential to make something people will really enjoy.
Some feedback I got from people was that the addition of character would greatly improve it and that the animations could interact with each other more, this was really helpful. It came across that the gimmick of the app was all that was sparking intrigue at the moment and I needed to find ways to engage audiences further.

A/V layering test

I came into this dissertation project having a rough idea of the practical aspect I wanted to create. I had been wanting to work on the idea of an interactive audio visual project for a long time however I thought this project would be the perfect opportunity for it to grow into something new and interesting.

The original idea was based on a sound sequencer where users can click on clips to start them playing, this would do something similar but allow the layering of audio and video. The concept for the final resolution of this would be a bank of clip ranging bass, drums, keys and percussion where users could create songs with ease into requiring any musical knowledge.

I tested this idea with a quick layering using VJ software resolume. I used some free clips of audio from Logic and then proceeded to create corresponding animations for each sound.

I was really happy with how the first test went intrigued to see what feedback I get on it.

question starter initial research

I know that I want to look at the relationship between audio and visual again like I did last year so I started by looking into all the books I could find talking about the relationship between audio and visual. Most of the books available are all to do with sound from the perspective of film making and the relationship they share in that context. This was still relevant however I was specifically looking for comments on how they combine to enrich media.
I found to books in particular had some relevant content in: spectre of sound and Drawn to sound: Animation film music and sonicity. This both had some interesting quotes talking about how the combination audio visuals creates another "creative organism".
I shall research further into these themes and books

New research paths (ephemerality)

After looking into audio visual media and starting to veer towards apps I started to look into concepts of ephemerality. Ephemerality is a concept usually applied to throw away things like leaflets and receipts but has a new relevance with digital media. Digital media is distributed in a very differently way because of its lack of physicality and with this lack of physicality it is easily thrown away. Rapid improvements with hardware also mean apps and other such media become redundant very quickly, which is something most traditional media will not experience other than natural decay which is likely a much slower process. 

A key book I've been reading for this section of research has been: Ephemeral Media 

Grainge, P. (ed.) (2011) Ephemeral media: Transitory screen culture from television to YouTube. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Changing themes

After looking into the original ideas over my summer proposal I decided I wanted to take a different path for my research. I felt my original ideas were going to turn into the argument of analog vs digital which I did not want to do as I felt its an over explored topic.

I decided to carry on from similar ideas for last years research project of audiovisual digital media and start a research project around that