Derek Chan

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to try to add some of the work I’ve done during my first semester in the inaugural year of the MFA in Interaction Design program.

First up:

Assignment: The Human Interface
Date: October 12, 2009
Course: Interaction Design Fundamentals
Instructor: Christopher Fahey

By turning a human being into a product and the actions performed by this person as the behaviors of its interface, the first part of this assignment caused us to examine behavior through a different lens. The second part was a crash course into creating the appropriate documentation to capture our findings.

Although we typically don’t talk about human beings as products with their own set of users, there is a lot of overlap when it comes to how the human is “used” by its “users” who all interact, depend, or interpret them differently.

The “human” I chose to examine for this assignment was the Classical Conductor.

Through my research, I learned that the role of the conductor is integral and irreplaceable in the function of an orchestra. In many ways, the conductor acted as the head of the “orchestral body”, so to speak, in that the body would not be able to operate without the directions given by the head. The different methods of communication between the conductor and the orchestra are astounding. The first thing I wanted to research was the actual makeup of the orchestra (the different users) and whether or not each musician would be “using” the conductor differently.

What I discovered was that the orchestra is divided into several sections – Strings, Woodwinds, Brass, and Percussion. The Strings section is further broken down into another five groups – Violins I, Violins II, Violas, Violoncellos, and Double Basses. I also learned that each section had a Section Lead who had additional responsibilities and the Strings section had a Lead for both the Violins I and II groups, with the Violins I Lead being at the top of this hierarchy.

The communication between each musician and the conductor was also critical to examine, because this was the means by which the “users” were using the conductor. My research led me to determine three methods of communication between individuals – visual (eye contact), gestural (hand motions), and auditory (listening). To document my findings, I created a concept model to map the hierarchical ecosystem of the classical orchestra.

Concept Model

Although the assignment only asked for a flow chart diagram, I felt it was necessary to map this rich system of communication and hierarchy to frame our understanding of how the individual musicians operated. The flow chart I ended up creating focused specifically the gestural communication between the conductor and the musician.

Flow Chart

To round out my documentation, I wrote functional specifications for the conductor, outlining how the different parts of his/her body operated and how the resulting actions caused behavioral change in their users, the musicians.

To sum everything up, a four-page Experience Brief was written which outlines all my research, findings, and analyses of the conductor and their role in the classical orchestra.