Encumbered Interaction: a Study of Musicians Preparing to Perform

Martinez Avila, Juan Pablo; Greenhalgh, Chris; Hazzard, Adrian; Benford, Steve; Chamberlain, Alan

Abstract

Guitars are physical tools (for making music) that require skillful two-handed use. Their use is also supported by diverse digital and physical resources, such as videos and chord charts. To understand the challenges of interacting with supporting resources at the same time as playing we conducted an ethnographic study of the preparation activities of working musicians. We observe successive stages of individual and collaborative preparation, in which working musicians engage with a diverse range of digital and physical resources to support their preparation. Interaction with this complex ecology of digital and physical resources is finely interwoven into their embodied musical practices, which are usually encumbered by having their instrument in hand, and often by playing. We identify challenges for augmenting working tools like this by supporting interaction that is encumbered, contextual and connected, and suggest a range of possible responses.

Citation

Martinez Avila, J. P., Greenhalgh, C., Hazzard, A., Benford, S., & Chamberlain, A. (2019). Encumbered Interaction: a Study of Musicians Preparing to Perform. In CHI '19: Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (1-13). https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300706

• Conference Name: CHI '19: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
• Conference Location: Glasgow, Scotland, UK
• Start Date: May 4, 2019
• End Date: May 9, 2019
• Acceptance Date: Dec 10, 2018
• Online Publication Date: May 2, 2019
• Publication Date: May 2, 2019
• Deposit Date: Jan 10, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 10, 2019
• Publisher: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
• Volume: 2019-May
• Pages: 1-13
• Book Title: CHI '19: Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
• ISBN: 9781450359702
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300706
• Keywords: Working Musicians; Design ethnography; Artifact ecology; Encumbered interaction; Embodied interaction; Augmented instruments
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1461067
• Publisher URL: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3300706
• Additional Information: Paper no. 476