Week 4 2/5 – 2/9

Advisor Meeting

We informed Mo of our decision with moving forward with the window box. He approves this direction and re-emphasized that we have to make sure our window doesn’t look like a screen. He suggested that we spend the week working on various demos of technology, working with Steve Audia and Dave Purta on how we should tackle this challenge. He also said we should use square, more car-window shaped windows rather than the round ones of airplanes. Because the view from the airplane window would just be some urban terrain

Spotify API

Angie and Annie did some research into the Spotify API and what functionality it could give us. We discovered that it could get a user’s currently playing song, analyze the parts of the song, and split a song by sections (chorus, bridge, solo, etc) or by segments (all similar sounding parts). This means we can understand the parts of the song with ease and change our visuals to match the loudness of the song or various other values. 

Video Demo

Angie made a demo using the values pulled from the Spotify API as an experiment of how we could use the analysis of the song to visualize the music. This demo used three different components of the song: energy, tempo, and loudness. 

Using these values, Angie put together a short clip of three different songs with different parameters. This was a good test of what content could look like for our experience, but after seeing it, we want to test more animated/stylized versions of the experience. 

[PUT VIDEO HERE 🙂 ]

Re-Pitch

We created a short pitch deck to show Deeplocal our goals for the window. We went over project and emotional goals, as well as a breakdown of how the window works and what guests should expect when they experience it. Kira created new concept art that really captures what the experience should feel like. 

Client Meeting

Sean was excited about our choice in direction and liked what new elements we brought to the table. He and Mo gave us good feedback on how we should adjust our goals as well as how we can push this project to the next level. We discussed what Spotify’s API is capable of and how powerful it is for what we’re trying to do. Overall, they’re excited about the possibilities that our project is bringing to the table and believe that if we play our cards right, we’ll have an incredible experience. 

Monitor

Steve Audia gave us a monitor that was going to be sent to the trash for us to experiment with, so Angie and Annie took it apart. 

(Include picture)

This experiment was to see how the LCD screen looks without the backlight, to see if we can use the backlight of another screen to light it. We didn’t have great results from this experiment, Dave informed us that it was most likely because the screen had a matte finish. When speaking with Deeplocal, they pointed us in the direction of a CMU alum who created something similar to what we were looking for. We will continue to research this, seeing if we can get more monitors to try and lay on top of each other. 

Conclusion

This week, we solidified our direction for the remainder of the semester. We will be focusing on the window and how we can create an engaging experience that keeps viewers attentive while listening to their favorite sad albums, making sure it doesn’t look like a YouTube search for “bus window footage.”