Gravity Sphere: Gestural Audio-Tactile Interface for Mobile Music Exploration

Written by: Jaakko Keränen, Janne Bergman, and Jarmo Kauko at the Nokia Research Center

The authors created a program called Gravity Sphere. It is essentially virtual shelves but for only music, using an accelerometer instead of motion sensing, and has limited visual feedback. The first instance created used the Nokia N95 and uses audio feedback for each targeted location to let the user know what they are accessing. If held in one position song samples will play that if chosen the phone will compile a play list. During the first of two tests the team found that their UI was poor and people could not understand how to use the Gravity Sphere properly without instruction. After being shown what Gravity Sphere could do the test subjects were very interested. For the second test the UI was upgraded to have a 3D arrow point in the direction the phone was oriented in the sphere and vibration feedback was given when the phone was moved enough for the phone to react. This setup was rated well and gave the user quicker control over their music than with a visual browser.

This is a great step in advanced control of phone input. Only having buttons on the phone is getting stifling when we have all these other input capabilities. The problem with this software is that sitting while using it would be somewhat awkward and it would take practice to understand exactly what the phone is doing and how it has mapped the music. I would probably continue with this use of the accelerometer but add in the abilities of the virtual sphere to branch this from just music control to a full form kinesthetic phone input style.