Olly is a slow tangible interaction music player that is linked with its owner’s Spotify music streaming account that occasionally surfaces songs (e.g., several times per week) from different periods in one’s past. When a song is surfaced from the past, a circular wooden disc begins slowly rotating. The rate of the rotation is based on how deep into the past a song is surfaced from; the deeper into the past, the slower the rate of movement. The disc will make twenty total rotations before abandoning the song and eventually moving onto the next selection. To play the song, the owner must speed up the movement of the disc by tangibly spinning it. The form of Olly enables it to operate and be played in any physical orientation. This design choice is motivated by a desire to support long-term interactions with Olly as it finds its place with people’s home and is re-configured to new places, people, and objects over time.
This project builds on recent research in slow technology (Odom 2015; Odom and Wakkary 2015; Odom, Sellen, Banks, et al. 2014) that provided initial evidence showing that slowing down interactions with large personal digital archives can provide sustained experiences of anticipation, enjoyment, and recollecting the past. However, limited design examples exist of this strategy being manifested through tangible interaction systems and none have investigated music consumption to date.
