Ⅴ. Findings
5.3 Cafe owner's opinion for commercializing Camue
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During the three weeks, 73 song tickets were inserted into Camue. Of them, 71 different songs were played. Ten recruited participants used one ticket per week (totaling 29 tickets), and 41 visitors used 41 tickets. Among them, three participants asked for more tickets, and we offered one more to each participant. Those log data were utilized to check the usage of Camue and interpret the behaviors of participants or customers in relation to their interview data.
5.1 Role of Materialization and Physical Traces of Music
We identified how Camue’s primary design characteristics - the shape derived from a photo frame, and a novel interaction loop - affected user experience in playing and sharing their preferred music in the café. Within the interaction loop we created, each user experienced Camue in the following steps: 1) writing users’ desired song on the paper ticket, 2) inserting the ticket into Camue, and 3) watching the shredding process and traces of the ticket.
Five of the recruited participants noted that writing the song title and artist directly on a paper ticket enable them to feel like emotionally matched the mood of the café while providing a non-digital feeling.
Additionally, P10 mentioned that he was able to rethink the reason for choosing a song while he was writing the song information on a ticket. He stated, “By writing the song title by myself, I was feeling like I chose the song more carefully. When I made a song request before [to the radio station], I simply did it with my mobile phone without much thinking. But in this case, I felt like thinking about it again while I was writing.”
Alice (Café 2 owner) stated that the uniqueness part of Camue is the visualization of the progress of shredding during music playback: “I think the visual effect [of Camue] is one of the biggest parts compared to other music-playing machines. The appearance of slowly shredding the progress of the ticket until the end of the music is a new stimulus for people. Thus, customers might like it.” In this regard, P8 mentioned the emotional stimulus provided by watching the ticket shredding process: “It was a visual effect that stimulated my emotions. Just like an old cassette tape player, which provokes me a sense of retro music playing experience, I could see how far it has progressed.”
Also, we identified that the frame shape of Camue makes customers focus on and wonder about the shredded traces of the ticket inside the transparent part of the device. O7 remarked, “I thought that the owner was decorating the café with shredded receipts.” The physical visualization of music ticket consumption aroused users’ interest in the songs chosen by others who previously used the device. O19 mentioned, “Just before when I went to put the ticket, I was looking inside [of Camue] who had inserted what. I wondered about what kinds of songs that people have requested.” Six of the recruited participants noted that the traces of tickets affected the users’ motivation toward their participation. P5 stated, “As the device [Camue] continuously shows the accumulation [of the shredded traces], it may
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get more attention from other people. I think if more people do that [insert song tickets]; the participation rate is more likely to increase. I would also like to participate because the amounts of traces prove how much music was played.”
These findings showed what design characteristics of Camue were used to shape a new experience for playing, sharing, and listening to the music chosen by a certain user in a semi-private space, such as a café. As Hallnas and Redstrom argued (2001), the participants’ voices highlighted the significance of aesthetics in the presence of technology, inner design logic, way of use, and reflective content as we intended to be incorporated in Camue. In particular, the interview results showed that Camue’s interaction design loop, which results in self-expression of the users’ musical tastes in the public space, becomes a tangible media design object showing the traces of public participation; this feature may trigger curiosity toward its uses and provide an opportunity to associate with other memories related to the experience (Zajonc 1965).
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5.2 Personal Taste in Music and Public Ambience of Café
During the interview, we could hear that several participants (N = 18) thought the music played an essential role in shaping the specific ambience of the café. In this context, the participants tended to select songs that were not very different from the café’s musical mood that had already been formed. At the same time, the less-intervening characteristics between individual customers of the café space (Pozos-Brewer 2015) encouraged individuals to choose songs that revealed their taste in music through Camue. P10 stated the reason for the song selection as follows: “I thought a lot about what [music] I have heard before, because I want to select what I want to hear as this is music request by me. Among them, I chose the songs by considering the mood of the café, the background, and so on.” As time passed, participants noticed that others in the café paid less attention to participants’ overall behavior of playing the song through Camue than they thought. Most of the participants tended to consider their taste in music more than external factors, such as musical mood or number/age of others in the café, when selecting songs. P2 noted the influence of external factors on song selection during the second- week interview: “I think I didn't really consider [external factors] this time. Ah... I was nervous because it was the first time that I put my ticket in the beginning. Now this time, I recognized that people didn't care as much as I thought.”
5.2.1 Changes in user’s perception to the café
From six participants, we confirmed that having the opportunity to play preferred music in the space at the time users want gives users the feeling of proactively changing the ambience of the café. P1 stated,
“I like that I could choose the time to play the song. If the café vibe is dead, I can play my favorite song at that time, and talk to a friend and say, ‘I like this song.’” The experience of playing a song directly through Camue gave users a sense of changing the mood of the space by themselves. Furthermore, I could see how the users’ perception of the café changed, such as becoming more familiar with the space and wanting to visit the space more frequently. P5 remarked on his change of perception of the Café 1:
“I've been here before [the experiment] to eat chocolate, but I couldn’t remember about the music when I recall the day … now this place [café] is somewhat fresh because of this [Camue]. I can lead and create the mood of this space by myself. I think the space becomes more memorable, and I want to share and recommend it to others.”
We could also see communication between the customer and café owner occurred as the appearance of the customer using Camue was shown to the owner. This provided the owner with a better understanding of the customers’ music tastes and further led to the customers’ positive perceptions of the space. During the study, Marry (Café 1 owner) directly commented to two participants about their song selection. Regarding this issue, P4 remarked, “I feel like I became closer to the owner [Marry]. She told
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me, ‘This song was good’ when she gave me the coffee, and that made me feel like I would like to come here often.”
5.2.2 Human as a sensor for filtering unethical songs for public
Previous music-playing systems in public, such as a jukebox, used a list of songs set by the owner;
however, Camue allowed customers to play music freely according to their own decision. Because of this unrestricted way of selecting music with Camue, at the start of the field study, Marry worried that the music would not match the mood of her café and wondered whether she should place a restriction on the genre of music. She noted, “The customer may play a song because he liked it. But it is difficult to tell him/her that this song is not allowed. I have to open my café anyway and think about whether the song may suit this mood, and some songs need to be sanctioned.”
Figure 21. The number of songs per genre played by the users in café 1 and café 2
During the second week of field study, P9 selected a strong beat of hip-hop music in the café 2. After P9 put the ticket and the music was played, the owner immediately asked our researchers to sanction the genre (hip-hop) of the song. P9 noted that the reason why she chose the hip-hop music is to elicit the reaction from other people. But she felt there was no unusual reactions of customers and said, “I was surprised that there was not much reactions, even though I was intentionally sitting here (a table in the middle of the coffee shop) to see others’ reactions.” In the third week, she mentioned that she selected a quite and well-known song that might suit the atmosphere of the café.
Except the above case, most participants noted that they chose a well-known piece of music or music that everyone would like it, considering the atmosphere of the café and the way in which their appearance of inserting the ticket was exposed to others. In other words, the human sensor (e.g., other customers’ presence) during the interaction process with Camue allowed for filtering of unethical songs for the public. During the three-week study, various genres of music were selected (Figure 21), the most common of which were pop and ballad, and some of the participants selected songs of unique genres (e.g., hard rock). For instance, P5 usually played soft-pop or classical music. He
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mentioned the influence of his song selection on people in the café: “There are some people who are studying, talking and, working, so I thought it would be good to play a song that fits the mood or can make the mood lively; something like, not too loud.”
As shown in a previous study, people in a common space seemed to accept some actions if the known risks are low (Waern 2016). We also saw that customers generally seemed to understand the music played by Camue in the café. People mentioned the situation where they listened to a song selected by various people through Camue: “Actually, it seems like most people haven’t played uncomfortable music” (O13); “It’s considered to be inevitable because it’s the place where a lot of people are together”(O18); “Because I have opportunity to select a song that I want, I should respect other people’s rights” (P4); and “It is an opportunity to experience various genres of music rather than listening to the music of the store owner’s personal taste” (P5). In addition, Camue’s direct tangible interaction provided a way of the ticket-inserting process was shown to others along with immediate song playing at the time the ticket was inserted. We noticed that this aspect seemed to influence people to be more carefully conscious of others in their music sharing experience. Several participants noted that getting others’ responses about putting a song ticket affected their song selection.
Based on these findings, we were able to identify that the spatial characteristics of the café and the direct tangible interaction with Camue led to users’ song selection, considering personal taste in music along with the ambience of the public context. This served as an opportunity to expand the areas that can be controlled by individuals in the café, a public space. Through this, users added new value and thoughts to the café, such as the creation of a new relationship with the owner and positive changes in perception toward the space. At the same time, in line with previous studies, the exposure of personal expression in a public space gives motivation and responsibility for participation to the subject contributing to public content (Lampe et al. 2010, Storteboom et al. 2017). In the process of playing music of personal tastes in public, we identified the need for a design that allows users to reflect their actions immediately upon those who share their experiences in the same space.
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5.3 Owner’s opinion on commercializing Camue
We were able to hear the opinions of the commercial installation of Camue through interviews with the owners of the cafe where the experiment was conducted. The two owners gave the opinion that Camue exists in a café so that it can differentiate their own cafe from other cafes by giving customers the opportunity to experience the device. Café 1 owner said she was willing to install the product. “I think it will be installed if the price is low. 400,000 ~ 500,000 won or less?” She mentioned the benefits of deploying Camue are providing customers a chance to experience, “Some people have fun doing something themselves. Through Camue, the best thing that such people might felt is that they write their own songs on tickets, think about what songs they like, move to the device and experience it. If people didn't do it [the process] themselves, but just click and select the music by me, they couldn’t experience such a feeling.” In this regard, café 2 owner stated that Camue induced the active experience of users. “Nowadays, in fact, most people are used to passive things rather than active ones.
It is also the same context in music. But in the old days, to listen or achieve something, I had to actively devote to do it. So, rather than just listening to something coming out, I think people prefers to take action and react to it.”
On the other hand, they also suggested more convenience way to develop the manual interaction process of Camue. Alice suggest the immediate text recognition process, “In the current state, when people write the song information, the song is not immediately recognized through the ticket, but you have to operate it additionally on the computer. I think if there is an easier way to recognize the text as it is written, it would be highly useful.” Marry also expressed concern over the additional workforce due to the manual process.
Through the interview with the owners, we identified several factors that should be considered to commercialize Camue. In terms of commercialization, there were various opinions on the pros and cons, and we were able to confirm that the owners showed positive opinions about the installation of Camue. From the owner's point of view, the experience through Camue seems to be able to provide people with a novel and valuable experience.
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Ⅵ.
Discussion and Implications
6.1 Co-creation of Physical Traces in Public
6.2 Mediation between Self-expression and Public Participation
6.3 Designing for indirect Restriction of Participation
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In this section, we will discuss implications for music playing and sharing experience in public, focusing on the data physicalization of music consumption and a new design space through understanding the role of medium for personal expression and public participation.
6.1 Co-creation of Physical Traces in Public
Designing for actively engaging interaction through the physicalization of data has been an ongoing area of interest in the HCI community. Recent studies have revealed that everyday interaction with physicalized personal data might motivate natural behavior change through self-reflection (Ju et al.
2019, Thudt et al. 2018). In this paper, we chose a café as an observational space because we anticipated that it would be a space for people to discover changes in their perceptions of space and further develop personal attachment to the space by using Camue. In a series of field studies, participants remarked that the ticket remnants from other customers gave an individual sense of contribution to the public space by playing music they wanted to share, raising interest about music played in the space and at the same time motivating them to engage with Camue. Also, the remnants allowed the café owner to recall and then reflect on customers who used Camue and the music they played. In this respect, we found that Camue helped users not only to change the space’s music but also to leave physical traces of their participation by playing songs from their favorite genres.
The traces visualized the invisible, abstract experience of playing and sharing music, allowing users to perceive “how long a song has been played” by showing a paper ticket being shredded as well as the song being played through the transparent part of Camue. Moreover, the accumulated traces demonstrated “how many people participated” through the volume of remnants; it also gave visual evidence that implied “how the musical mood of a particular space had been formed.” In other words, remnants of tickets were able to express the quantity and kind of the music consumed and shared in a specific space. While space, in our case a café, has been mostly interpreted by café owners as commercial space, in our study, the café customers had the opportunity to reinterpret the space more actively by participating in Camue’s interaction loop. From what we mentioned in the findings, this opportunity introduced a new way of adding value to the space by allowing the users to rethink their previous image of the café.
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Figure 22. Various color of shredded tickets indicates the genre of the music
In addition, because a café is a space that consists of individuals or small groups who create private spheres, the space’s atmosphere may limit the range of musical genres that will be played.
Accordingly, there is a need for a design that mediates between participation of playing and sharing music with contemplation of song selections and expressing participants’ song tastes in public spaces.
Camue’s interaction process seemed to affect users’ consideration of the ethics of song selection, but the unified visual (e.g., genre, artist) of the remnants of the shredded tickets may add new value to publicly created music and the perception of the space. In other words, co-creation of remnants made by the public can give the user a better understanding of the space and further allow the space to be characterized as a space for sharing specific music.
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6.2 Mediation between Self-expression and Public Participation
As mentioned by Storteboom’s study (2017), we could also confirm that it was difficult to avoid that explicit individual’s music playing in a public place can make others feel offended. During the experiment, one participant selected fast-beat hip-hop music that was quite different from the existing musical mood of the café (e.g., calm music within the genre of indie, ballade).
We noticed that such a personal selection made the café owner or other customers feel uncomfortable with the sudden change of mood caused by the song. In this context, Camue, a product that enables individual expression in public places, has been challenged to coordinate tensions between expressing personal taste and participation in music that will not disturb the mood of the public space. We attempted to overcome this challenge with a new interaction loop through Camue, which provides several steps that could enable users to think and reflect on their song selection, materializing the invisible “participation,” and makes the users’ song ticket irreversible by destroying it after the participation. Based on Camue’s design considerations and our findings from the study, we propose the following factors in designing products that enable personal expression in public places.
First, the design is needed to provide a moment to think about the personal media selection and playing process. As shown in our findings, writing the song information directly on paper with a pen gave the user the opportunity to spend more time thinking about the song selection. The process of shredding the paper song tickets during the music’s play time and the shredded remnants are considered to permit the consumption of certain media played according to the user’s taste through physical visualization. This experience enables users to reflect on what people think about the songs they request in the space and induces people to consider the possible negative consequences (e.g., the ethics of unmatched song selections in a café) when choosing a song.
The second factors are that (1) the form, in terms of styling design of an object, might need to be inspired by everyday tools (e.g., frames) so that a designer can incorporate its characteristics or unique aspects into the designed object, and (2) the application of embodied knowledge and actions (e.g., writing on paper) that one can use to design interaction with everyday tools for providing an intuitive interaction to the users. This suggests that designers could leverage various knowledge and behaviors that are experienced and learned with everyday objects. By doing so, designers can evoke curiosity and excitement and provide better engagement with the designed object so that they can lead the users to interact with the object in a more desirable way, as it is meant to be experienced. This approach can also lower the technical or cultural barriers for users to experience the new interactive device, especially in a public space, where there is more chance for users to be embarrassed or to get